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What is trim!!!

NZed

NZed

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 24, 2011
1,139
1
Canada, Eh?
First off, what is TRIM?
second, is TRIM hardware or software? or both?
if its software, do YOU think apple will include TRIM support in Lion?

Im looking to buy an SSD btw so i was wondering

TIA!!!

BTW i did GOOGLE and i didnt really understand any of them except for wikipedia but i was still confused so i asked
 
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https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=11846647#post11846647

SmokeyRobinson said:
It's whats been on my Windows computer with an SSD and not your mac.
Click to expand...

Yep, one of many reasons.

SmokeyRobinson said:
It's whats been on my Windows computer with an SSD and not your mac.
Click to expand...

greytmom said:
I didn't know either. So, I googled.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/10
Click to expand...

You did what? Blasphemy, you will burn in the fires of the long shadow. How dare you.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM

Google's your friend.

TRIM is needed / used because of the way that an SSD interfaces with the Operating System. There are no sectors and such on an SSD, but in order to have the OS recognize it as a traditional hard drive, it emulates the structure of a traditional spinning hard drive. This is all well and good, but this low level operation leads to performance degradation over time as more and more bits get used.

SSDs don't flip their bits back to 0 once they're freed up (until you Zero it out, that is). This, of course, will reduce performance over time. This is where TRIM comes in. It helps identify those pages/blocks of bits that are no longer in use, and 0's them out.

OS X does not have this feature, but Zeroing out the drive should suffice. For more, read that Wikipedia article, it really explains it well. I had a power-point lecture from a professor that is researching SSD write optimization, but seem to have misplaced it.
 
Something that is not nearly as important for computers or solid state drives as it is for keeping a neat appearance.

TRIM (or lack of) on most modern SSDs is not a major issue as the wear issues are grossly overstated and most controllers have their own optimization mechanisms that will keep the SSD running well for as long as possible.
 
thanks to all!

I DID try googling but i couldnt really understand them(im a noob and newbie)
i just thought that if i asked you guys, i'd get the answers more humanly not
some hard to understand computer language


thnx neways...

and for those guys who was being rude, why not try googling it and explaining it to me so that a newbie like me would understand...
 
cause i did and i didnt ******* understand any of them(except wikipedia, which was a still confusing thats why i asked)
 
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NZed said:
cause i did and i didnt ******* understand any of them(except wikipedia, which was a still confusing thats why i asked)
Click to expand...

Yeah, we come off harsh. In the future you can prevent this via just mentioning, that you did search for it but could not understand the meaning of it and link to the sources you have found.
That way we will be more at peace with ourselves and may provide another link or even explain it.
Or not. Who knows.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
Yeah, we come off harsh. In the future you can prevent this via just mentioning, that you did search for it but could not understand the meaning of it and link to the sources you have found.
That way we will be more at peace with ourselves and may provide another link or even explain it.
Or not. Who knows.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll keep that on my mind...

Anyways, so from what i read and came to understand, TRIM is software. So do you guys think that OSX will support TRIM in the future(hopefully near future)?

Thanks again!
 
It is software but it is very low level. File system level that hasn't changed in a while. Windows file system and OSX is different and apparently there are some reasons why it is more difficult with HFS+ compared to NTFS.

It is not really needed. If an SSD has enough spare and good garbage collection it will work fine without ever needing trim support. It is still better with TRIM because the controller has more info and can do wear leveling with less wear and thus a longer life for the SSD at the same performance.

The SSDs in the MBA from Toshiba do a good job of keeping performance up but I think those SSDs would last long in Server workload. With private workload I guess it depends.
 
walshlink said:
Ask your dad. :)
Click to expand...

He said it's a toggle on a boat that makes a leveling plane (trim tabs) on the stern go up and down. :p

trim1.jpg
 
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All I have to say is even if somehow TRIM is far superior and therefore windows are rocking and osx degrade over time, there is no way to verify it since all my window machine gets reformatted every 4 to 6 month due to OS inefficiency and virus so there really is no fair comparison to do. :)
 
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