New SSD and Trim?

[Irock619]

Hey guys and gals! As I am waiting for my new SSD to arrive I have been doing more and more research about SSD's. I am getting a Crucial 256GB SSD and am wondering if turning on trim is necessary. I read that trim is off by default and needs to be hacked to turn on for SSD's other than Apple's. Is this true? Or is there a setting in OSX Lion where I can turn on trim? I also read that the new Crucial M4 has garbage collection that essentially works like trim. Any suggestions would be great, thanks!

 

[IngerMan]

It's has been a much debated topic. Install your SSD, test its performance right away via benchmarking. Keep an eye on it as time goes on. Certainly no reason to put it on a brand new drive, only when and if you have a noticeable slow down.

I have the M4 256, ran Trim to start and have it off for now. The only thing I noticed via bench marking with and with out trim is, with trim on write speeds 270's, with it off 250's.

 

[jcpb]

The M4 has idle garbage collection. Give it a few hours doing nothing and you'll be fine.

 

[CosmoPilot]

The M4 has idle garbage collection. Give it a few hours doing nothing and you'll be fine.

What he says!

However, do nothing is not exactly accurate. It's based on idle time. If you're just surfing the web, doing light work...chances are you have a lot of CPU idle time going on.

My crucial M4 has been rock solid. In terms of checking performance over time, I would only start worrying if you're doing serious data transfers on a continuous basis. If not, don't enable TRIM and allow the controllers GC to work...it does so beautifully. If this wasn't the case, you'd hear a lot more complaints about SSDs and their crappy garbage collection. Since you can't find much about it would suggest the controllers work just fine for average users.

 

[Irock619]

Ok so is TRIM off by default in Lion? I just got done chatting with Crucial support and they said for OSX trim is not necessary. For windows trim is automatically enabled and should be left on.

 

[Exana]

I prefer to have TRIM enable with Windows and OS X. By default with Lion, TRIM is not active with none Apple SSD.

 

[Irock619]

I prefer to have TRIM enable with Windows and OS X. By default with Lion, TRIM is not active with none Apple SSD.

Ok thanks for the reply. I think I'll give GC a chance without trim. Besides, figuring out how to activate trim in OSX sounds too complicated for me lol!

 

[donaldmac]

I have had a 128GB SSD in a Leopard MBP for over a year now. I have reached the full capacity and deleted files (in other words probably written to all parts of the drive) by now. It would normally be a good candidate for a disk defrag or it's equivalent (TRIM), but as my OS doesn't support it do I have any other options? I certainly have noticed a considerable drop in performance lately.

I'm thinking either backing up all my data with something like super duper, formatting my SSD and then putting data back.

Or

Using another Mac with a version of OSX that supports Trim and then attaching my SSD drive too it as a second USB drive. Would that even work? can you TRIM a usb drive and how would I know when the "TRIMMING" was done?

 

[jcpb]

Unless your Mac is initially configured at the time of purchase with a SSD - and paying the awful Apple tax/pricing - TRIM is not automatically enabled. It's the main reason why Apple continues to charge an arm and a leg over SSD upgrades on all Macs other than MBA and MBPR.

However.

Not all is lost. Page 1 of Google search "ssd trim mac terminal" = https://gist.github.com/2986122 ... these terminal commands will enable TRIM on all non-Apple SSDs. If your OS X gets updated, though, you will need to run them again.

The idiot's way of doing this is TRIM Enabler, google that.

 

[Irock619]

Unless your Mac is initially configured at the time of purchase with a SSD - and paying the awful Apple tax/pricing - TRIM is not automatically enabled. It's the main reason why Apple continues to charge an arm and a leg over SSD upgrades on all Macs other than MBA and MBPR.

However.

Not all is lost. Page 1 of Google search "ssd trim mac terminal" = https://gist.github.com/2986122 ... these terminal commands will enable TRIM on all non-Apple SSDs. If your OS X gets updated, though, you will need to run them again.

The idiot's way of doing this is TRIM Enabler, google that.

Actually, I was asking if it's automatically enabled because I was going to disable it. This idiot is not going to use TRIM. I don't transfer mass files all the time so GC should work as it should while idling.