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Any news on TRIM ssd implementation for OS X.

A

applecultvictim

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 27, 2009
549
0
Just had a read at wikipedia, look it up if you want too, about this interesting and important function for ssds and its implementation in os'es and was wondering whether anyone on the developping side had any news of snow leopard catering for that.:apple:
 
yes... im waiting for this feature too...:mad:

this is very important to me, because I want to buy an SSD for use with the Snow
 
If you closely read that Wiki article you will note that the TRIM command is not actually a standard yet, nor is it implemented in all (possibly most) SSD's. So what is your rush? This is not something that is really going to impact you much, and is something that different SSD vendors have been handling in different manners up to this point. It is very possible that MacOS X avoids this problem with its SSD vendors in a different way. TRIM is just an attempt to get a standard solution.

At some point when it is appropriate Apple can put this into a dot update, assuming that they have not already worked it (or another solution to the problem) in.
 
Omg, didn't think anyone would reply. Thanks.

Btw, no sign about snow and trim, so I hate to think it's not gonna be there for the time being, also would love to see it as an update to leopard.
 
Anything new on this subject? Snow leopard is coming before too long, and the new Intel SSD's that support trim should be available again anytime. I plan on getting the gen 2 SSD from Intel, but wonder if with OSX I will be able to take advantage of TRIM.
 
I just got this from xbench (Snow Leopard 10.6.1), before and after i did the firmware ugprade with trim support.
 

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I don't mean to defend Apple, but is the TRIM command useful, in practice?

I know it helps in theory.

If a flash drive keeps a little capacity held back, it could use those empty blocks for new writes, and then recycle the old blocks afterwards. It's the same thing, isn't it? You've already got the write-leveling overhead, and this would just plug right in to that without any extra effort. TRIM would be useful for really large block erasures, but for smaller write patterns, a small set-aside would do the same thing.
 
Amdahl said:
I don't mean to defend Apple, but is the TRIM command useful, in practice?

I know it helps in theory.

If a flash drive keeps a little capacity held back, it could use those empty blocks for new writes, and then recycle the old blocks afterwards. It's the same thing, isn't it? You've already got the write-leveling overhead, and this would just plug right in to that without any extra effort. TRIM would be useful for really large block erasures, but for smaller write patterns, a small set-aside would do the same thing.
Click to expand...

You don't seem to understand the benefit of TRIM. No matter what SSD you use, performance will drop (sometimes significantly) over time. TRIM eliminates this and it needs hardware and OS support. Intel and Indilinx have done their part on the hardware side. Microsoft has done it's part on the software side with Windows 7. The question is when will Apple do the same with OS X.

Read the AnandTech review above to see the great benefits if TRIM.
 
Amdahl said:
I don't mean to defend Apple, but is the TRIM command useful, in practice?

I know it helps in theory.

If a flash drive keeps a little capacity held back, it could use those empty blocks for new writes, and then recycle the old blocks afterwards. It's the same thing, isn't it? You've already got the write-leveling overhead, and this would just plug right in to that without any extra effort. TRIM would be useful for really large block erasures, but for smaller write patterns, a small set-aside would do the same thing.
Click to expand...

And going off of the Toms Hardware benchmarks, there are some performance gains (not from the firmware update), with TRIM enabled as well.
 
Mazda 3s said:
You don't seem to understand the benefit of TRIM. ...

Read the AnandTech review above to see the great benefits if TRIM.
Click to expand...

I did read, and did see the improvements noted.

It looks like TRIM is useful for large/high volume write applications. For small write applications, the benefits of TRIM can be achieved without OS support by a flash drive that maintains a free block reserve, separate from the formatted capacity of the drive.

So, it is a useful capability that should be supported by Apple, although Intel does make a de-TRIM-ragmenter for Windows that can run automatically once a day to get similar effect on TRIM-unsupported OS, like Vista or XP. Perhaps a tool will exist for OSX soon as well.
 
FYI Samsung SSD drives come with a self-healing technology that the drive does itself. No operating system support needed. I'm sure as more SSD drives support the TRIM feature support in OSX will be added in a point update - silently like a ninja :)
 
But TRIM is not even an official standard yet. Are all TRIM implementations compatible?

Then look here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/8721603/

TRIM is great in theory but not yet perfected. And we have people complaining that Apple has not implemented it yet? I think Apple is being prudent.

SSD's are going to be great. I just don't think they are ready for the mainstream user just yet.

S-
 
CBlakeston said:
FYI Samsung SSD drives come with a self-healing technology that the drive does itself. No operating system support needed. I'm sure as more SSD drives support the TRIM feature support in OSX will be added in a point update - silently like a ninja :)
Click to expand...

Indeed they do (including the OCZ Summit SSD which uses a Samsung controller). They've also implemented the same garbage collection / self-healing tech in the new firmware for the OCZ Vertex range of SSDs using the Indilinx controller. The nice thing about this is that it works irrespective of Operating System.
 
CBlakeston said:
FYI Samsung SSD drives come with a self-healing technology that the drive does itself. No operating system support needed. I'm sure as more SSD drives support the TRIM feature support in OSX will be added in a point update - silently like a ninja :)
Click to expand...

NATO said:
Indeed they do (including the OCZ Summit SSD which uses a Samsung controller). They've also implemented the same garbage collection / self-healing tech in the new firmware for the OCZ Vertex range of SSDs using the Indilinx controller. The nice thing about this is that it works irrespective of Operating System.
Click to expand...

The garbage collection implemented by Samsung is a great thing indeed. However it will only work with an OS that has a NFTS file system, mainly Windows. This is because of how the garbage collection works. The Samsung controller will peek at the NTFS $bitmap to clear up unallocated areas during idle time.

Being Mac OS X uses a HFS+ file system it won't work with Mac's. So once again us Apple users are getting screwed. Below is a link to one article that mentions this. Just google it though and you can read all about it.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=766&type=expert&pid=11

Or right here from the Corsair website ( P128 & P256 are rebranded Samsung SSD's ). Look down the FAQ until it talks about performance degradation. It states it must have the NTFS file system for garbage collection.

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=81190
 
killerbee79 said:
The garbage collection implemented by Samsung is a great thing indeed. However it will only work with an OS that has a NFTS file system, mainly Windows. This is because of how the garbage collection works. The Samsung controller will peek at the NTFS $bitmap to clear up unallocated areas during idle time.

Being Mac OS X uses a HFS+ file system it won't work with Mac's. So once again us Apple users are getting screwed. Below is a link to one article that mentions this. Just google it though and you can read all about it.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=766&type=expert&pid=11

Or right here from the Corsair website ( P128 & P256 are rebranded Samsung SSD's ). Look down the FAQ until it talks about performance degradation. It states it must have the NTFS file system for garbage collection.

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=81190
Click to expand...

The Support Admin on OCZ's forums states that garbage collection works regardless of OS.

I think you are confusing GC with TRIM which currently, only works with NTFS.
 
spacepower7 said:
The Support Admin on OCZ's forums states that garbage collection works regardless of OS.

I think you are confusing GC with TRIM which currently, only works with NTFS.
Click to expand...

No, actually I'm not. I know full well what TRIM is. Samsung does not support TRIM, hasn't even made an attempt yet. Although they say they are working on TRIM support. This is their work around until this happens. It is not TRIM, it is garbage collection.

the support admin on OCZ might be making a general comment or is mistaken. I don't know because I haven't read his comments. Maybe you could provide a link.

Every company has a different implementation of garbage collection. Some implementations might very well work in any OS, Samsung's does not. Its as I described and provided links for. It is well documented in many places, just google it.
 
So, can somebody please tell us what we are waiting for, all the mac users, in order to obtain and use ssd disks without problems, as windows 7 users already do?
 
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