SSD and TRIM on Yosemite

[thisisdallas]

About a year ago, I bought a 512GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD and installed it into my 15" Late-2011 MBP. After reading up on them, I was recommended to use TRIM enabler in order to keep the drive from eventually slowing down. I went ahead and activated TRIM for the time, and it's been active for some time now.

After some time, it somehow got turned off I believe, and I used the Yosemite DP for its entirety.

Fast forward to now, and I formatted and installed the official release of Yosemite. My first course of action was to go re-activate TRIM. The website for TRIM-Enabler had tons of people complaining of issues with it messing up their laptops. I waited a few days, and the developer has updated it and says kekt-signing needs to be disabled and has added the functionality into the application.

My question is now:

Is it really a major deal if I just don't bother with TRIM?

I've read some articles that say TRIM is only really relevant if you have an older SSD, but then other ones that say it's a major deal and is crazy important.

So which one is it?

 

[2984839]

It's not a big deal. I have an SSD that has not had TRIM enabled for about 3.5 years with no noticeable slowdown. Another one has gone 2 years without it and has not been noticeably slower either.

Just leave about 10% of the space unformatted so the drive has some room to work with for garbage collection.

 

[BenTrovato]

Obviously better with trim but it won't kill you. It will probably be a few days or weeks until they sort it out. I've had to manage with it off to sort out a few issues.

 

[thisisdallas]

It's not a big deal. I have an SSD that has not had TRIM enabled for about 3.5 years with no noticeable slowdown. Another one has gone 2 years without it and has not been noticeably slower either.

Just leave about 10% of the space unformatted so the drive has some room to work with for garbage collection.

The entirety of my drive is already formatted for OSX. Should I go out of my way to keep 10% of it unformatted? I usually only get the drive about 50% filled up since I usually only keep around the stuff I need to survive on it. Even less now that I've started actively using my old HDD for movies and shows.

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Obviously better with trim but it won't kill you. It will probably be a few days or weeks until they sort it out. I've had to manage with it off to sort out a few issues.

Sounds good! I'll give it a while and will keep checking up on it whenever I think about it.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[2984839]

The entirety of my drive is already formatted for OSX. Should I go out of my way to keep 10% of it unformatted? I usually only get the drive about 50% filled up since I usually only keep around the stuff I need to survive on it. Even less now that I've started actively using my old HDD for movies and shows.

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Sounds good! I'll give it a while and will keep checking up on it whenever I think about it.

Thanks for the reply!

I wouldn't worry about it. SSDs are over-provisioned already; the 10% is just an extra cushion to ensure that there will be some extra free space. If you were installing OS X over again, I would recommend it. If not, it's not worth the effort. Both the SSDs I mentioned above have the entire drive allocated to the operating system with no ill effects.

 

[simonsi]

It will probably be a few days or weeks until they sort it out.

As far as I can see its as "sorted out" as its going to get....no Trim for me then, I'm not disabling kext-signing for it...

 

[dukebound85]

Apple needs to stop locking down OS X

 

[thisisdallas]

As far as I can see its as "sorted out" as its going to get....no Trim for me then, I'm not disabling kext-signing for it...

What exactly does kext-signing do? Trying to weigh pros/cons of whether it's still worth adding trim.

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Apple needs to stop locking down OS X

I agree.

The experience in the Apple ecosystem is really great for the most part, so I can't really complain too much.

I just don't understand why they feel the need to only allow devices with Apple-installed SSD's to have trim enabled by default. If it's such a beneficial thing and can be turned off and on by a free and simple app, it isn't hurting anyone by turning it on...

I get that they want me to buy a new laptop as often as possible, and I'd love to do so, but financially that's just never gonna be a thing

 

[simonsi]

What exactly does kext-signing do? Trying to weigh pros/cons of whether it's still worth adding trim.

It is to kernel modules and OS X components what the Gatekeeper setting is to Apps - it ensures only valid code elements are used, it helps security and compatibility - it helps keep the Apple experience more predictable for users.

Turning it off to run Trim Enabler isn't something I'm willing to do. Running without Trim seems to not be a deal-breaker....

 

[thisisdallas]

It is to kernel modules and OS X components what the Gatekeeper setting is to Apps - it ensures only valid code elements are used, it helps security and compatibility - it helps keep the Apple experience more predictable for users.

Turning it off to run Trim Enabler isn't something I'm willing to do. Running without Trim seems to not be a deal-breaker....

Yeah, definitely sounds like I'd rather just live without TRIM, honestly.

Thanks for the help!

 

[madmartigan1]

Just upgraded to Yosemite last week. Everything seemed to be working fine. Had trim enabled on Maverick. Was having an issue with finder and disk utility agreeing on the amount of free space. Turned off time machine and all seemed to be resolved. Turned off computer. On boot up got the deny circle and slash. May have been trim enabler running that caused this, not sure.

Did a clean install of Yosemite. Not running trim. Samsung 840 pro seemed a bit slower especially on startup. This weekend downloaded a bunch of photos, and noticed a huge slow down on the usb3 reader. Normally 32gb takes approx 5 minutes, is now taking 25 minutes. One of the usb ports seems to be not working with the reader either.

Downloaded BlackMagic Speed Test and the results showed that my write speed is down to 30mb/s. Remember that was up around 500mb/s if I remember correctly.

Any ideas??

 

[simonsi]

My Crucial M500 120GB is still hitting factory speeds at 94% remaining life with no TRIM enabled since Yosemite installed on general release day. Drive is approx 15mths installed.

 

[niteflyr]

Just upgraded to Yosemite last week. Everything seemed to be working fine. Had trim enabled on Maverick. Was having an issue with finder and disk utility agreeing on the amount of free space. Turned off time machine and all seemed to be resolved. Turned off computer. On boot up got the deny circle and slash. May have been trim enabler running that caused this, not sure.

Did a clean install of Yosemite. Not running trim. Samsung 840 pro seemed a bit slower especially on startup. This weekend downloaded a bunch of photos, and noticed a huge slow down on the usb3 reader. Normally 32gb takes approx 5 minutes, is now taking 25 minutes. One of the usb ports seems to be not working with the reader either.

Downloaded BlackMagic Speed Test and the results showed that my write speed is down to 30mb/s. Remember that was up around 500mb/s if I remember correctly.

Any ideas??

I just went through same thing with my Mac Mini. (samsung 840 ssd) Started acting slow after 1 week of Yosemite. Black Magic test showed 50 MB write speed. Downloaded newest Trim Enabler (yes I read all the warnings) and enabled trim. Ran BM test 2 days later, speeds near normal again.

 

[Chopinke]

SSD sowed down

I have Samsung Pro 256GB, and it considerably slowed down when I measure with Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. The Write speed is about 25-30MB/s, which is even worse than a HDD....

 

[johnnnw]

People that are saying it's not a big deal are incorrect.

I have spoken directly to a few people who refurbish the Samsung SSD's that work with Samsung and they all say TRIM is VERY important for a long drive life.

Saying TRIM isn't a big deal is completely 1100% false.

 

[RamCity]

People that are saying it's not a big deal are incorrect.

I have spoken directly to a few people who refurbish the Samsung SSD's that work with Samsung and they all say TRIM is VERY important for a long drive life.

Saying TRIM isn't a big deal is completely 1100% false.

I agree, and the whole question about whether TRIM is important can be answered with a bit of reading:

I’m by no means an expert, but I wrote this article recently to explain why TRIM is important:


For further reading:

1. Read this presentation about TRIM and Garbage Collection from Kent Smith of LSI


2. Article 1 and Article 2 from Tweaktown, written by Chris Ramseyer, their senior SSD Editor and in my opinion one of the leading experts on SSDs in the journalist world

 

[simonsi]

I’m by no means an expert

Maybe not but you claim to be the sole distributor for Angelbird SSDs.

Any test data references to actual tested degradation in speeds by vendor by SSD with no TRIM enabled? That would settle this discussion in minutes in an informed way. As it is without TRIM Samsung seems to have anecdotal rapid and sudden speed drop-off, Crucial maybe less so. Such differences probably aren't surprising as SSD firmware plays a part.

 

[RamCity]

Maybe not but you claim to be the sole distributor for Angelbird SSDs.

I never made this claim, but we are the sole distributor in the Australian market. Please quote your source so we can correct it?

Any test data references to actual tested degradation in speeds by vendor by SSD with no TRIM enabled? That would settle this discussion in minutes in an informed way. As it is without TRIM Samsung seems to have anecdotal rapid and sudden speed drop-off, Crucial maybe less so. Such differences probably aren't surprising as SSD firmware plays a part.

The Tweaktown article here shows how TRIM plays a part in performance. In that, a sandforce firmware revision resulted in TRIM being disabled, and resulted in poor performance compared to the version in which TRIM functionality was restored.

 

[simonsi]

I never made this claim, but we are the sole distributor in the Australian market. Please quote your source so we can correct it?

Its in the article you wrote and linked to.


The Tweaktown article here shows how TRIM plays a part in performance. In that, a sandforce firmware revision resulted in TRIM being disabled, and resulted in poor performance compared to the version in which TRIM functionality was restored.

I saw that but I would think that if it is an issue this big and severe then there would be stacks of data to back up the issue, cross-brand/manufacturer etc. Otherwise that could just be an issue with that FW from that manufacturer and its interaction with the OS. (playing a bit of devils advocate).

As I said the anecdotal "evidence" is that the effect can vary considerably by user/brand/installation so it would be great if there were some better data to back up why not running TRIM is a bad idea and how much of a degradation can be expected and whether say periodic running of TRIM can restore performance or whether any degradation is locked-in once it occurs.

 

[buckets4eyes]

Hybrid Drives

Does this impact Hybrid Drives the same way?

Or maybe my question is... Do Hybrid drives behave like SSD drives when managing data in the NAND portion of the drive? If so would the smaller NAND portion create a bottleneck or more of a performance hit vs a SSD drive without TRIM?

I'm a SSD newbie and would like to know what I'm getting into installing a Hybrid Drive or SSD on a MacBook Pro running 10.10.1.

 

[Furry.Marsupial]

Just put a 500 Gb 840 EVO in my 2009 MBP.

Question for those seeing the slowdown.

Have you run the Samsung utility to apply new firmware and re-write the whole disk. It is quite a new release to fix this issue. Takes a while to run- even on my clean disk. I ran it under windows then re-formatted.

Mine runs at 230 + as it s only the old slow bus but is twice as fast as the Intel 100 Gb drive I pulled out.

 

[nollimac]

Just put a 500 Gb 840 EVO in my 2009 MBP.

Question for those seeing the slowdown.

Have you run the Samsung utility to apply new firmware and re-write the whole disk. It is quite a new release to fix this issue. Takes a while to run- even on my clean disk. I ran it under windows then re-formatted.

Mine runs at 230 + as it s only the old slow bus but is twice as fast as the Intel 100 Gb drive I pulled out.

I have been having issues with my Samsung 840 Pro after installing Yosemite (the right side of the menu bar acting up). I saw the firmware that is Windows only. Did you had to remove the drive from your laptop? Mine is in the Mac Mini 2012 and just don't want to deal with that unless absolutely needed.

 

[Furry.Marsupial]

Nollimac,

I was lucky that I read about the "fix" before installing the drive. I did it in a Win7 box as NTFS on a SATA cable as I couldn't make a bootable USB stick. Then reformatted the drive to Mac

Colin