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OS X El Capitan Opens Door to TRIM Support on Third-Party SSDs for Improved Performance

So this puts 2013 Mac Pros in a weird position. It should be good news, but the only third party upgrade is the OWC parts which don't have TRIM support, they have their own OWC voodoo garbage collector. Apple will not sell you an OEM upgrade, which is just bizarre.

Unless I'm wrong about the OWC upgrade not supporting TRIM in addition to their weirdo custom firmware.
 
Apple has actively sabotaged the long-term performance of non-Apple branded SSDs for years. Now they might finally provide a standard (though somewhat convoluted) way to enable TRIM without hacking the kernel extensions.

To thank Apple profusely for this move is classic Stockholm syndrome.
 
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Assuming this stays in the next OS X release (or even is included in the update out soon) what would people recommend as a good ssd drive for a 2011 iMac connected via thunderbolt?

Which drive makers allow firmware updates via a mac? I don't have a win pc I could use to update the ssd firmware, so I should choose a manufacturer who provides updates via OS X, right?
 
magbarn said:
I wish it was just a TRIM issue (may very well be), but the 840 EVO has been a complete cockup of a screwup. Google it and you'll see why Samsung should've just replaced these permanently defective drives with refurb 840 pro's at the very least. To sum it up, Samsung didn't really take into account how fast the TLC flash loses voltage (in other words - 'forgets') so the flash ram becomes much harder to read over time. So your previously written info is 'hard to read' so it causes significant slow-downs. There's been 2 patches released for this, the first one - which is supposed to make it easier to read previously written info - by re-writing once - failed, and now they're doing a more drastic measure of the drive substantially increasing the frequency of re-writes. So your drive will never perform as well as it should AND your drive will wear out faster than it was supposed to due to the frequent re-writes to try to maintain performance. (What makes this even worse is that TLC has much less durability than MLC flash)

Long story short, I'm avoiding all TLC flash SSD's from now on. Go for a 850 pro or Sandisk extreme instead...

PS All SSD's have to have their data re-written periodically as they all 'forget' over time - hence why SSD's are a poor choice for long-term storage especially if left off - but Samsung's small process TLC flash is really bad at this. The 850 Evo is supposed to fix this as the 3D TLC flash used in it is much bigger so it doesn't lose voltage as fast.
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I've heard about some issues with the 840 EVO, but I've been pretty happy with it, so far. Apart from the slight reduction in performance (which may be due to not having TRIM enabled, or it may also be related to the issues you pointed out), it's been a pretty good investment.

I will definitely be going with a Crucial MX200 if I ever end up trading this SSD, but I will never buy a SanDisk one ever again. My first SSD was a SanDisk Extreme II 480GB. It had massive issues - one of which was that it took 45+ seconds to wake up from sleep (a common problem with Extreme IIs and Macs, from what I could gather) - and SanDisk's support team were beyond useless.

If OS X 10.11 helps with the performance issue, I'll stick with this drive until I switch to a new Mac. If not, I'll try to sell it and switch to Crucial. Thanks for the info, though!
 
philotas said:
First time that I am reading that 10.10 Yosemite has problems with TRIM

Currently I am using 10.9 with a Samsung 830 Pro SSD and I wanted to upgrade to to 10.10 on a bigger Samsung 840 Evo SSD.

Reading this article I probably should wait for 10.11 El Capitan.

I wish I could wait for 10.11 but the most recent Xcode is not supported on 10.9.

The real question is: Do I have to worry about TRIM on an 830 Pro or 840 EVO anyways since I haven't in 10.9?
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Yep, don't upgrade to 10.10 from 10.9 if you want TRIM support with your Samsung 830 Pro SSD.
I'm not upgrading till I have to.
 
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I'm happy to see Apple doing something to appeal to us nerds who want to customize our systems more than your average user would.

Free provisioning (allowing anyone to develop apps on iOS hardware without a developer account) and now this. I like the way Apple is going this year and hope they keep it up.
 
Credit for finding this goes to mikeboss & Daku93

Procedure for Cappy - (Yosemite is pending)

1 - Boot into the recovery partition, and use the new Security Configuration menu tool to turn off rootless

2 - Reboot to desktop and open a terminal session

3 - Enter the command "sudo trimforce enable"

4 - Press the enter key and follow all the prompts, and agree to the terms of use

5 - Reboot into the recovery partition and turn rootless back on again

6 - Boot to the normal desktop and enjoy trim on all of your SSDs

Reportedly, the final release of Yosemite will also include this ability but to my knowledge it hasn't yet been included in the beta of 10.10.4
 
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keysofanxiety said:
I'd recommend Crucial over Samsung, got an 840 Evo in my 2012 15" MBP and I really wish I went Crucial. Fitted 50+ Crucial SSDs in Win/Mac systems @work in addition to 7 in friends' MacBooks and they just seem to run much, much smoother.

But either way you won't run into any problems, they both still work.
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I recommend the Crucial too. I've been using a 512GB M4 for years in an early 2011 MBP.
 
keysofanxiety said:
I'd recommend Crucial over Samsung, got an 840 Evo in my 2012 15" MBP and I really wish I went Crucial. Fitted 50+ Crucial SSDs in Win/Mac systems @work in addition to 7 in friends' MacBooks and they just seem to run much, much smoother.

But either way you won't run into any problems, they both still work.
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Could you explain what was un-smooth about the operation of Samsung drives? Are you just talking about the 840 EVO, or others as well?
 
This is the right thing for Apple to do, and the right way to do it.

By making it a command line utility, those who replace their own drives will be able to access it, while the everyday user will be well aware he's performing a "special operation." And any GUI wrappers built around it will be by third parties, so again - Apple won't be seen as responsible if issues come up on a more obscure model of who-knows-how-many third party SSDs out there.
 
JustThinkin' said:
Could you explain what was un-smooth about the operation of Samsung drives? Are you just talking about the 840 EVO, or others as well?
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Nothing's particularly bad about the Samsung drive. I mean, it's an SSD, it's going to be quick. However it just seems to be a little slower. Read/write speeds through Blackmagic are slightly slower than the Crucials. There are some benchmarks online where random read/write (if memory serves) are a little better on the Crucials. General things like Logic Pro X loading times seems to fluctuate now and then.

Again, it's not like it's unusable, or even bad by any means. It's still quick as heck. It's just that the Crucials seem a little snappier. And I've fitted a lot more Crucials and (as of the time of writing) haven't had any problems or complaints with them.

Furthermore, these days the Crucial SSDs are cheaper than the 840/850 Samsungs, so I was just hoping to impart my knowledge and suggest that the cheaper SSD doesn't mean it's worse -- in my experience they actually seem better. So all I'm saying is, don't worry about paying extra for the Samsung. :)
 
I just put an SSD in my iMac 39 hours ago, can't wait for even more performance when El Capitan is released to public beta next month.
 
keysofanxiety said:
Nothing's particularly bad about the Samsung drive. I mean, it's an SSD, it's going to be quick. However it just seems to be a little slower. Read/write speeds through Blackmagic are slightly slower than the Crucials. There are some benchmarks online where random read/write (if memory serves) are a little better on the Crucials. General things like Logic Pro X loading times seems to fluctuate now and then.

Again, it's not like it's unusable, or even bad by any means. It's still quick as heck. It's just that the Crucials seem a little snappier. And I've fitted a lot more Crucials and (as of the time of writing) haven't had any problems or complaints with them.

Furthermore, these days the Crucial SSDs are cheaper than the 840/850 Samsungs, so I was just hoping to impart my knowledge and suggest that the cheaper SSD doesn't mean it's worse -- in my experience they actually seem better. So all I'm saying is, don't worry about paying extra for the Samsung. :)
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I'm still unclear - is it primarily (or only) the 840 EVO you've compared to?

I've used Samsung 470s, 830s, 840 (not Pro or EVO), and 850 Pros - they've all worked well. But I haven't had any Crucials to compare to.
 
Nice new feature, but is it only for legacy Macs and hackintoshes? I would be hard pressed to find it useful on the current lineup.
 
to clarify, when you enable trim force, its for all SSDs and not just one at a time? it applies to all SSDs if you were to connect internally or via thunderbolt?

Either way, a step in the right direction


gpat said:
Nice new feature, but is it only for legacy Macs and hackintoshes? I would be hard pressed to find it useful on the current lineup.
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it'd be beneficial for external SSDs as well via USB3 and Thunderbolt
 
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