In the absence of OSX TRIM support, how do you restore SSD performance on a Mac?

[InfinitySquared]

So, for clarity's sake: I have a W7 bootcamp partition. Why can't I just boot into that every once in a while and let it work its magic? I do plan to be installing macdrive anyway, since I want to format my second internal disk to HFS+ and make it OS-neutral.

 

[hatbrox]

So, for clarity's sake: I have a W7 bootcamp partition. Why can't I just boot into that every once in a while and let it work its magic? I do plan to be installing macdrive anyway, since I want to format my second internal disk to HFS+ and make it OS-neutral.

May I suggest to format your second internal disk to the exFAT format.
It's much better as it is natively recognized by mac os ( 10.6.5) and the latest versions of windows.
It will also save you the cost of macdrive.

 

[GLS]

Well I did a secure erase using Ubuntu 10.10 LiveCD on my Mac Mini server. I had an issue booting from the CD so I had to use rEFIt to get it running. After that I put the Mini to sleep to unfreeze the drive and then erased the drive with a few simple command lines in terminal (I also had to put "sudo" in front of command).

My Intel drive is back to factory speeds. This should be a sticky for conducting an ATA secure erase on a mac.

Hi-

At the risk of bringing the wrath from others on this forum, could you please detail each step of this procedure, so that others may use your method?

I am aware that I can search for the appropriate text strings to enter from a terminal session within Ubuntu, but others may not.

Also, please elaborate on rEFIt, how to use it, etc.

Perhaps your reply could be the sticky....

Many thanks for your efforts.

 

[barmann]

Just a thought , is there a secure erase tool one can use with a Windows Restore disc ?

I just did a firmware upgrade for my OCZ Vertex 2, using this guide , worked well and is easy.

 

[AttilaTheHun]

May I suggest to format your second internal disk to the exFAT format.
It's much better as it is natively recognized by mac os ( 10.6.5) and the latest versions of windows.
It will also save you the cost of macdrive.

corect me if I wrong, WIN 7 in bootcamp need NTFC format

 

[almostinsane]

So, for clarity's sake: I have a W7 bootcamp partition. Why can't I just boot into that every once in a while and let it work its magic? I do plan to be installing macdrive anyway, since I want to format my second internal disk to HFS+ and make it OS-neutral.

Because TRIM works off of the NTFSdeletenotify command. If you boot into bootcamp, TRIM would only be active for the NTFS partition, not for the entire drive as the rest is HFS.

 

[almostinsane]

corect me if I wrong, WIN 7 in bootcamp need NTFC format

Well TRIM only works with NTFS anyway. and exfat is for SD cards.

 

[hatbrox]

corect me if I wrong, WIN 7 in bootcamp need NTFC format

I think we're talking about 2 different things:
you said "I want to format my second internal disk to HFS+ and make it OS-neutral"
And I'm saying don't use HFS+ but exFAT.

And yes, windows 7 requires NTFS on the bootcamp partition but that's a separate topic, not related to your second hard disk that you wanted to format in HFS+

 

[hatbrox]

Because TRIM works off of the NTFSdeletenotify command. If you boot into bootcamp, TRIM would only be active for the NTFS partition, not for the entire drive as the rest is HFS.

totally agree.

This is the workflow I use from time to time:
My SSD is plit in 2 partitions:
NTFS for bootcamp
HFS for mac os.

When I want rejuvenate my SSD:
I clone bootcamp with winclone (it creates an image of the bootcamp partition, including all the hidden partition and files)
I clone mac os partition with superduper

Then I boot the computer with linux live CD and erase the entire SSD (as per this post, see earlier messages)
then I boot with mac OS installed on a USB key (which is itself a clone made with superduper) and re-instate the 2 partitions (bootcamp and mac os) onto the fresh SDD.

end to end, it olny takes 1 hour (but my clones are smart update of existing clones, so it's a lot faster and the disk images are stored on FW800 external RAIDO disks)