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First Third-Party SSD With Native OS X TRIM Support Launched by Angelbird

Buy OEM Apple SSDs off ebay. I bought a 512GB Samsung (830-based) Apples OEM SSD for my 2011 iMac, and have had no issues.

Some sellers also have the OEM PCI-stick based SSDs as well.
 
lukarak said:
We have lived without that 'security' feature for all history except last two weeks. It's not like the world is going to come to an end if you disable it.
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True but why disable something thats now available that wasn't before.
 
I looked at their MBP installation instructions and you lose the DVD/Optical drive?? Am I missing something? Why isn't this just a a 1-1 swap for the HDD?

Also, does it ship with the required tools or are those extra?
 
Ted13 said:
I looked at their MBP installation instructions and you lose the DVD/Optical drive?? Am I missing something? Why isn't this just a a 1-1 swap for the HDD?

Also, does it ship with the required tools or are those extra?
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If you purchase the data doubler kit from OWC, they naturally assume that you are installing that kit, which is designed to replace the optical drive.
You don't need that kit at all, if you just want to upgrade the existing hard drive to an SSD. The iFixit repair guides will tell you what tools you need, and you can decide if you have something that you can use, or you can purchase the tools that you might need. The tools are usually little cost, but may not be designed for heavy use either. They will work for the job at hand.
 
dukebound85 said:
Read the article before you post
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Read the post before your reply.

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shabanga said:
Obviously you didn't rtfa...Trim Enabler apparently doesn't work in Yosemite.

Also, as a few others have pointed out. Most modern SSDs from trustworthy manufacturers (Samsung, OWC, and a few others) have controllers that do their own garbage collection and other maintenance items, making TRIM support irrelevant.
Click to expand...

TRIM support is less important with good garbage collection, but not quite irrelevant.
 
rGiskard said:
TRIM support is less important with good garbage collection, but not quite irrelevant.
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This is just plain wrong for reasons I set out earlier.


PS: If anything, I would say TRIM is more important with GC, as it enables the GC to actually "collect" the garbage instead of just moving it about and wasting good cells (which is what it does when the data freed by the OS is not TRIMmed on the SSD)...
 
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I got the do not enter sign on Yosemite few days ago and restored it by re installing the OS, never thought Trim Enabler is the cause (at first I blame vmware or little snitch).

Now I don't enable it, I just keep the free space at 30% for the drive to breath. Also probably will buy the 512GB mx100 drive to upgrade my 250GB samsung 840 evo. My mac is only sata 2, faster drive will not give any benefit, so I went for durability of MLC drives.
 
TRIM enabler under OS X 10.10 Yosemite

So, I'm not any kind of expert on SSDs and TRIM and GC and such, but I did do a bit of research before upgrading to an SSD on my MBP recently.

I installed a Samsung 850 Pro 1TB in my mid-2012 non-retina MBP in mid-Sept, while my system was still running OS X 10.9.5. I installed TRIM enabler, let it do it's thing.

I read about the limitations imposed on TRIM enabler by OS X 10.10, and decided the trade-off was ok with me. So, I disabled TRIM enabler, updated to 10.10, reenabled TIRM enabler and let it disable the global kext-signing checks. Everything has been working fine. I'm aware that if I reset my PRAM or SMC stuff, that I'd have a non-bootable system, as the kext-signing checks would be back in place, and the system would halt during boot-up when it got to the TRIM enabler stuff.

So, basic trade-off is: TRIM enabler with added issue of having to be careful to disable it first if I ever need to reset the PRAM, vs the security issue of having kext-signing disabled.

I went for using TRIM enabler, since I'm not too worried about the security issue, because (A) I don't install flakey stuff from untrusted sources, and (B) the kext-signing thing was not in place in early OS X revs, and it hasn't been a problem for me. (Also, no else uses this system but me.)

It is definitely annoying that Apple doesn't allow native TRIM support for non-Apple drives. It seems like it would have taken a very small amount of dev time to make it work if they were so inclined.

That said, if I have to dump TRIM enabler in the future for whatever reason, I'll probably be in ok shape in terms of long-term drive wear, since as I understand it, the wear-statistics of the Samsung 850 Pro model line is way better than any other SSDs out there due to the backwards move to a 40nm process (while the other SSD makers are pushing down to tinier processes like 20nm and below), without hobbling the capacity of the chips, due to the unique 3-D stacking of the cells. Decent article on this here:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7237/samsungs-vnand-hitting-the-reset-button-on-nand-scaling

Bigger picture: It's all going likely be moot within a few years, as new Macs are probably going to only have non-upgradeable storage options anyway. (And the rest of the PC industry will likely follow within 4-8 years is my guess, at least with personal form factors like laptops) I don't like that, but that's a whole other conversation about modular upgradeable designs vs integrated "black box" designs and how they relate to a changing marketplace of the non-techie masses and the techie professionals/enthusiasts.
 
Maltz said:
While all of that is true, and I'll second the Samsung recommendation (but make sure you get the firmware update for the EVO that was just released!) ...

It pisses me off to no end that Apple doesn't support TRIM on third-party drives. Windows 7/8 universally supports TRIM, Linux universally supports TRIM. Why doesn't OS X? It's like their lack of AHCI support when you're using Bootcamp (or anything that doesn't boot into EFI). There's just no reason for it other than to go out of their way to gimp performance when something is not 100% Apple.
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Respectfully, I understand your taking umbrage with Apple's lack of support for Microsoft's OS. Please let me know when MS adds native support for HFS+...

There are few companies that will "support" their competition. Bootcamp is there to allow consumers to run Windows when necessary.

Yes, it sucks they don't provide native TRIM support on third party SSDs, Apple wants you to buy their products. GOD FORBID, they want to make money like every company out there...
 
dukebound85 said:
Uh what? You said use trim enabler. It doesn't work in 10.10 by default, hence why this article made news.

Also, trim and garbage collection serve different purposes..
Click to expand...

My point is that good garbage collection does not obviate the need for TRIM in all usage cases. For my own use, SSDs with excellent background GC do just fine, but those doing intensive video editing will have a different experience.

And yes Trim Enabler still works in Yosemite with a little tweak. Read the article.

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0x0x0x0 said:
This is just plain wrong for reasons I set out earlier.


PS: If anything, I would say TRIM is more important with GC, as it enables the GC to actually "collect" the garbage instead of just moving it about and wasting good cells (which is what it does when the data freed by the OS is not TRIMmed on the SSD)...
Click to expand...

Do you realize that I was responding to someone who claimed that "TRIM is irrelevant" if one has good GC? Not sure what you're arguing about, since I agree with you.
 
rGiskard said:
Do you realize that I was responding to someone who claimed that "TRIM is irrelevant" if one has good GC? Not sure what you're arguing about, since I agree with you.
Click to expand...


I do, you said that TRIM was less important with GC, when only the opposite is true (i. e. TRIM being more important) for the reasons stated in the post you quoted.


PS: TRIM is not *JUST* for speed!
PPS: It should be obvious from what I said in the earlier post, but for the avoidance of doubt, GC without TRIM actually makes write amplification worse, as invalid data is being copied by GC during its cycle.
 
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0x0x0x0 said:
I do, you said that TRIM was less important with GC, when only the opposite is true (i. e. TRIM being more important) for the reasons stated in the post you quoted.


PS: TRIM is not *JUST* for speed!
PPS: It should be obvious from what I said in the earlier post, but for the avoidance of doubt, GC without TRIM actually makes write amplification worse, as invalid data is being copied by GC during its cycle.
Click to expand...

GC is supposed to happen when the drive is idle. If the deleted block gets used again by the OS before GC happens then it will, of course, now have valid data again. An overwrite with new data accomplishes same thing that TRIM does. This all depends on how the OS itself chooses to reuse blocks it recently deleted. If it doesn't quickly reuse blocks, TRIM is important, if it does reuse blocks TRIM is less so.
 
BurgDog said:
GC is supposed to happen when the drive is idle. If the deleted block gets used again by the OS before GC happens then it will, of course, now have valid data again. An overwrite with new data accomplishes same thing that TRIM does. This all depends on how the OS itself chooses to reuse blocks it recently deleted. If it doesn't quickly reuse blocks, TRIM is important, if it does reuse blocks TRIM is less so.
Click to expand...

Yes, but how often does the OS reuse the same LBA? Journal doesn't reuse the same space, and most filesystems write to "first fit" not "first free" space.

A simple DTrace script would tell you what LBA your OS is writing to. Compare that to how often GC is invoked.


The reason why people perceive GC being OK without TRIM is simply because they don't use their SSDs to capacity so there are plenty of blocks that GC could write the garbaged data to before that becomes a problem.
 
The entire SSD situation is disappointing as it seems to be one of the most significant changes to computer systems in recent years.

High cost, limited capacity, and compatibilty issues are problematic, at least for me.
 
0x0x0x0 said:
Yes, but how often does the OS reuse the same LBA? Journal doesn't reuse the same space, and most filesystems write to "first fit" not "first free" space.

A simple DTrace script would tell you what LBA your OS is writing to. Compare that to how often GC is invoked.
Click to expand...

Looking at space used by OSX on the disks it uses (used disk utility partition map) it appears OSX doesn't randomly write the disk but expands usage from the beginning of the disk. This is consistent with a first fit strategy, also an attempt to keep mechanical seeks as short as possible. Looks to me to have a very high reuse likelihood of deleted blocks.

Now whether or not the reuse occurs before GC is another question. Even then the lack of TRIM means a block with invalid data being moved is somewhat temporary as it will eventually get overwritten and reused and data in that block valid again.

I think over provisioning, and a high likelihood of reuse of deleted blocks reduces the benefit of TRIM, at least from a performance perspective.

I had an OWC 240GB in my Mac Mini that was about 75% full. I saw no measured performance drop after a year of normal use. Moot for current Mac Pro as it has an Apple SSD. I am still interested in this issue as I am looking for an SSD to put in a Thunderbolt enclosure.
 
0x0x0x0 said:
I do, you said that TRIM was less important with GC, when only the opposite is true (i. e. TRIM being more important) for the reasons stated in the post you quoted.


PS: TRIM is not *JUST* for speed!
PPS: It should be obvious from what I said in the earlier post, but for the avoidance of doubt, GC without TRIM actually makes write amplification worse, as invalid data is being copied by GC during its cycle.
Click to expand...

That's just being pedantic. For most uses write amplification is not an issue unless we're talking about a low-end TLC NAND SSD with 3000 P/E cycles. And get this: the users who need better endurance are the same users who will spring for an MLC NAND drive! Furthermore, they will have upgraded to a faster drive long before their SSD wears out.

I think we can both agree however that good GC does not make TRIM "irrelevant".
 
DeltaMac said:
If you purchase the data doubler kit from OWC, they naturally assume that you are installing that kit, which is designed to replace the optical drive.
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So you could just replace the HDD, or put in two SSDs if you replace the optical drive as well?
 
rGiskard said:
That's just being pedantic. For most uses write amplification is not an issue unless we're talking about a low-end TLC NAND SSD with 3000 P/E cycles. And get this: the users who need better endurance are the same users who will spring for an MLC NAND drive! Furthermore, they will have upgraded to a faster drive long before their SSD wears out.

I think we can both agree however that good GC does not make TRIM "irrelevant".
Click to expand...

Indeed, we definitely agree that a good GC in no way makes TRIM irrelevant.

Incidentally, according to an article on AnandTech, Micron's NAND smaller than 34nm is rated for 3k p/e cycles. Given that most "modern" SSD now use 20nm MLC chips, your assumption that only the low end SSDs have ca. 3k p/e cycles is unfounded.

At the end of the day, you need TRIM, GC just masks the problem but does increase the wear, and OS X is the only OS from main-stream OSes that doesn't "permit" trim on aftermarket SSD, even Android does it! And the problem is not technical one, as TRIM capability is reported in ndevice's ATA IDENTIFY DEVICE command, i. e. at the same time as the "APPLE SSD" string is returned.
 
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