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@RosynaKeller

If all you have said is accurate, why has Apple used TRIM on all SSDs that are factory installed in it's own products? The Apple SSD's are Samsung so I'm wondering why Samsung wouldn't include the needed code that apparently has corrected the stated problems in the Apple specific SSD's.
Don't expect to get an answer to this - your statement is too logical to refute.
 
timsutton said:

> Apple engineers have confirmed that the nvram boot-args command option
> will not be in the shipping release of El Capitan, and may be removed
> from developer betas before the release

…"

… Apple could certainly make changes as development on OS X El Capitan continues, but given the built-in trimforce tool it certainly appears the company intends to allow TRIM to run on third-party SSDs. …

… in the Apple dev forums …

Also published in the prerelease area of Apple Developer Forums: trimforce enable (2015-06-12). At the moment, just one person there watching public discussion in MacRumors.

@cashxx is that you there, with the same name as here?
 
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It seams to me that for those of us looking to update to a new ssd (after 10.11 release) will need to choose ssd devices that the manufacturers support updates via OS X. Does anyone know what brands do currently? (Other than OWC that says they do not need trim.)
 
Finally. But what to do with my mid 2010 MacBooks custom fusion drives ssd, that has been untrimmed since Yosemite?

There's no urgent need to do anything after re-enabling TRIM unless your drive has got unacceptably slow. As long as it hasn't ground to a halt, any 'wasted' space will gradually get back into circulation as the OS tries to re-use it.
 
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Core Storage is a volume manager, it is between the drive and the partitions. It's mainly used for providing full disk encryption in addition to supporting fusion drive. Here's what Apple wrote in their OS PDFs:



In addition, there are signs from the installer logs when installing Yosemite that Apple is tagging legacy next to HFS+. It is likely CoreStorage will allow Apple to effortlessly covert HFS+ partitions to the newer file system later.

That would make sense, but wouldn't that also require drives with enough free space, to move the written data to free blocks and back again, to change the structure? Unless of course it could utilise RAM, but that would be very prone to errors. Or am I mistaken as to how the procedure might be done?

Doesn't matter as even that workaround isn't reliable. Every window expanded that way increases size in a WEIRD non predictable way.

THIS, is how windows should expand when clicking the green button:


As noted in a quote further down, you've just misunderstood how the button works. In fact, the behaviour of the zoom button is one of my favourite features of OS X. I hate how Windows maximises windows, because it doesn't allow for easily working with more windows. This is why they needed that snap thing and I never felt it was missing on OS X. Clicking zoom let's me see as much content as my screen allows, without stretching or using redundant screen space that could've been used better for other apps.

Yeah, that's always been one of the very few problems I've had with Mac OS X vs Windows. In Windows, the window resizing is actually predictable, but I have never in my 12 years of using Mac OS X known exactly how the green button worked.

See above and below.

Either way, the benefits of TRIM on OS X are largely placebo)

What do you base this on? From a technical standpoint, I see no reason for this to be true. If the drive doesn't know which blocks are free, how can it effectively manage them?

The maker of this video and probably many others didn't actually notice the true function of the little green + button. It is an easy mistake to assume that it is a maximise button when you come from Windows, however as shown in the video, different behaviours occurred depending on the situation. For example, when he opened safari new, and was in the favourite sites view, his safari window didn't resize, but it did when he went onto a website that expanded further down the screen. It didn't go wider though. The reason for this? Because the website wasn't designed to be displayed wider than it was already shown - it doesn't require horizontal scrolling. When the page requires horizontal scrolling because it doesn't fit into the current window size, that is when the window would also widen.

It was Apple's way of making workspaces efficient for multitasking and having windows the required size side by side with one-another.

This is all a little moot now anyway since the green button behaviour was changed to full screen since 10.10. There is however another truly reliable application you can use for maximising windows in 10.10 and below - it's called BetterTouchTool. Requires a small donation but it is the best I have ever seen - adds snapping like what you get in Windows 7+. Reason I say 10.10 and below is because of course in true Apple style they are adding this old feature finally in El Capitan

But you can get the green button behaviour by either double clicking the title bar (if not set to minimise) or option clicking it. (and can't you make it zoom by default in System Preferences? I'm too lazy to check, but I think you can. Regardless, it's not gone. Other than that, I just quoted you for reference.

It seams to me that for those of us looking to update to a new ssd (after 10.11 release) will need to choose ssd devices that the manufacturers support updates via OS X. Does anyone know what brands do currently? (Other than OWC that says they do not need trim.)

Do you mean Firmware updates? Why would that be more of a need now than before? Anyway, yes. Most manufacturers do actually. Most however don't have tools that make firmware updates easy. Samsung for instance has easy firmware updates through Black Magic on Windows, but require booting into their own special bootable software for firmware updates. This can be done by copying a disk image to a USB or something, and booting from it. Alternatively you can update firmware through Windows. It'll work the same when you plug it back into OS X, and you won't have to do it very often. Firmware rarely gets updated.
 
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That would make sense, but wouldn't that also require drives with enough free space, to move the written data to free blocks and back again, to change the structure? Unless of course it could utilise RAM, but that would be very prone to errors. Or am I mistaken as to how the procedure might be done?

  1. You would be told that there isn't enough data to update to the new OS if there is not enough free space. Just like it already does on iOS. One of the biggest problems with iOS 8 was that there weren't enough free space to install it.
  2. CoreStorage can resize your partitions fairly easy, look at BootCamp as an example. Apple can simply do cycles of resizing partitions until it can fit it in. This isn't new, it has been done before for other file systems.
Basically, it goes like this:

  1. CoreStorage will first shrink the primary partition until there is no empty space
  2. Create a new expandable volume with the new file system, move your data files in there until the volume is full
  3. Shrink the primary partition again as there is now a gap from where the files were moved to the new partition.
  4. Continue to move files until there's nothing to move.
  5. Once there is nothing to move, delete the primary partition. Expand the new volume to cover the whole disk and install the OS into it and do any cleanups as needed.
 
This is the problem with Open Source programming - often it is done by people living in their parents' garage or basement.

1. This is massively insulting to anyone who has ever contributed to Linux

2. The vast majority of Linux code now comes from corporations/paid developers:
  • The number of paid developers is on the rise, as companies aggressively recruit top Linux talent. More than 80 percent of kernel development is done by developers who are being paid for their work. Volunteer developers tend not to stay that way for long.
(http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news...-foundation-releases-linux-development-report)

3. I seem to remember someone else working in their parents garage who did Ok?
 
I just finished installing 6 850 Pros on a 13G Dell server. Huge improvement over the old school.

And I've installed PCIe/NVMe SSD blades that are more modern and way faster than the 850s, but I still don't understand what is being referred to as smooth. My 840 Pro is just as smooth as my 850 Pro and my PCIe blades. Please explain where the smoothness is exhibited.
 
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As noted in a quote further down, you've just misunderstood how the button works. In fact, the behaviour of the zoom button is one of my favourite features of OS X. I hate how Windows maximises windows, because it doesn't allow for easily working with more windows. This is why they needed that snap thing and I never felt it was missing on OS X. Clicking zoom let's me see as much content as my screen allows, without stretching or using redundant screen space that could've been used better for other apps.

Ah, I get it now. It's supposed to leave out whitespace, and the window it's "zooming" somehow determines that. The problem with that is that I often intend to make the elements of whatever I'm looking at larger after increasing the window size, so it's frustrating when it doesn't make the window take up the entire screen.

In that case, it's sometimes better the Mac way. But it was confusing until you told me how it works, so that's a downside.
 
In that case, it's sometimes better the Mac way. But it was confusing until you told me how it works, so that's a downside.

Yep, it's basically "optimise* window size for the contents to be displayed"
* Minimise the need for scrolling but do not make the window larger than needed to achieve this.
 
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And I've installed PCIe/NVMe SSD blades that are more modern and way faster than the 850s, but I still don't understand what is being referred to as smooth. My 840 Pro is just as smooth as my 850 Pro and my PCIe blades. Please explain where the smoothness is exhibited.
I've never installed an 840. I was comparing an 850 to the SSD.
 
  1. You would be told that there isn't enough data to update to the new OS if there is not enough free space. Just like it already does on iOS. One of the biggest problems with iOS 8 was that there weren't enough free space to install it.
  2. CoreStorage can resize your partitions fairly easy, look at BootCamp as an example. Apple can simply do cycles of resizing partitions until it can fit it in. This isn't new, it has been done before for other file systems.
Basically, it goes like this:

  1. CoreStorage will first shrink the primary partition until there is no empty space
  2. Create a new expandable volume with the new file system, move your data files in there until the volume is full
  3. Shrink the primary partition again as there is now a gap from where the files were moved to the new partition.
  4. Continue to move files until there's nothing to move.
  5. Once there is nothing to move, delete the primary partition. Expand the new volume to cover the whole disk and install the OS into it and do any cleanups as needed.

I actually thought of this as I wrote the message. That would be so slow on a filled up 3tb 5400RPM drive though. Jesus.

Ah, I get it now. It's supposed to leave out whitespace, and the window it's "zooming" somehow determines that. The problem with that is that I often intend to make the elements of whatever I'm looking at larger after increasing the window size, so it's frustrating when it doesn't make the window take up the entire screen.

In that case, it's sometimes better the Mac way. But it was confusing until you told me how it works, so that's a downside.

Precisely. Apps can also decide to use it differently by using an API, but most (except for Java apps) follow Apple's guidelines. Java apps most commonly do what you originally wanted.
You could zoom the content, before clicking the zoom button (that's what the green one is called), but of course you wouldn't be able to see the stuff you're zooming properly in the window size it'd create and so on. But this is why they have the full screen mode. Best of both worlds. Obviously full screen takes you out of the desktop, which has other downsides and upsides. But hey that's the game. And you can change the behaviour if you prefer something else.
 
It seams to me that for those of us looking to update to a new ssd (after 10.11 release) will need to choose ssd devices that the manufacturers support updates via OS X. Does anyone know what brands do currently? (Other than OWC that says they do not need trim.)
Apple will publish a tech note, which explains which SSDs are compatible with the trimforce command.
 
Looks like the topic has broken into a few other streams, but my comment goes back to the original topic: Trim

I have a Crucial MX100 512 GIG SSD in my Mac and asked Crucial Tech support if I need Trim. They respond saying that I do not need it, for their built-in garbage collection is enough. What Tech support said to do is boot with the option key selected and allow the computer to be idle over night and the garbage collection option will do it's thing. Do this once a month they said (depending on your usage, then twice etc) and you will be fine..

Well....kind of a pain to do, but would work....but....

I decided to install Trim Enabler to see if there would be any changes and to do a test. Well....right away, my Mac became faster, and noticed performance improvements!?! My SSD ran fine without Trim Enabler, but once Trim was enabled, My system ran faster and performance was noticeably better...

I have another Older Mac with an OCZ 128 SSD Sata III (which seems faster than the Crucial, but not complaining about the Crucial drive) and tested my theory out and installed Trim Enabler, and that too instantly ran faster and performance was noticeably better. Again, without Trim Enabler, performance was still fine, but now it was better with Trim enabled...

So, I can say, "Yes" Trim is important, because though I have garbage collection SSD drives, with Trim enabled, performance on both drives are noticeably better with both garbage Collection and Trim working together.
 
Apple has to support trim, there are more and more external SSD drives out there.

Yes, but after first thinking about it at first, I would have said that they don't have too, for they can do what they want...BUT...they shot themselves in the foot when they made the Mac Pro and designed the concept (and they said) that there is basically no more need for internal large drives, just get a small SSD inside, and use external thunderbolt drives for everything else right? They added many external thunderbolt ports on the box (or trash can) to support this concept. They did not want you to open the system to add drives, so they made all go external. Understandable and not a bad idea...

But...if you are a pro user in video, you NEED extra drives for production. When the Mac Pro came out in late 2013, external SSD drives were still too expensive to think they would be used for external. Thunderbolt 2 was not even out yet. There concept change the way people think now and their current direction (like Microsoft for many years before) is heading for basically nothing inside their machines, and more cloud base as a solution. But video production cannot use iCloud streaming for production (or even if they thought to do so), so YES Apple HAS to NOW make this available. They have no choice now with technology advancements in external drives.

They only way they can continue with their business model of No 3rd party trim is to make their own external SSD drives, but that is really nonsense for them. Holding out to not have Trim available for 3rd party SSDs is now not good for overall business and not worth the trouble, for they are looking to work with the professional market (IBM partnership) and the business world uses more externals then younger iphone users with 2-3 gigs apps who can instead use cloud storage to maximize their experience instead.

Mac rumors JUST had an article stating that Phil Schiller said that the iphone with 16gig is fine, for you can just use the cloud for everything else (summary). But for production needs, externals are a necessity and now SSDs in the future will be the standard for high production demands (especially with 4-5K video and the required speeds).
 
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Do you have a reference you can direct me to regarding Thunderbolt and TRIM? I was under the impression one of the advantages of TB was that it did handle TRIM well.

Thunderbolt doesn't handle TRIM or any SATA command at all. What TB does is transport the PCIe data from the host to the simple SATA controller (**) inside the remote enclosure. The point is that this is no different that being hooked to a SATA controller that was embedded directly on the host's motherboard. To the driver it is for the most part the same ( the TB device can be unplugged so needs to respond to appearing/disappearing be in the steady state connected mode there is no difference. )

What you want is a direct SATA controller connection between the drive and the host system. If you have that then the system can pass native SATA commands.

If your TB enclosure doesn't have a SATA controller in it then that is a problem. The majority will because it isn't doesn't really buy much to put only a USB one in. Since the SSD drive is a SATA ( or PCIe native ), some PCIe connection is going to be needed to present anyway.

There are some combo SATA + USB controllers out there. ( if have multiple ports on drive closure might be one chip package servicing both ports. ). The "back end" on that controller is PCIe.... which is what would be hooked to the TB bus.

** Technically RAID controllers present as a SATA controller but they also tend to bridge baggage. They get in the way of processing the SATA commands directly to the drives. Anything that takes multiple drives and makes them appear as a virtual single drive may or may not pass along metadata commands like TRIM. ( they could. it is just more work to do and they typically trade faster read/write for doing the "extra" work; so they just throw away the TRIM command. Technically drives can just throw it away if they want. )
 
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As for Thunderbolt enclosures forwarding TRIM, it entirely depends upon the bridgeboard chipset used, the same as other interfaces. It may be that most Thunderbolt ones do indeed support it. In searching, I see various people saying TRIM is not available on their Thunderbolt connected SSD but then never name the manufacturer or model of the enclosure.

You are mixing up different technologies into some warped explanation.

TB peripherals don't have any "TB -> anything" inside of them. There is a TB controller inside the host that takes in PCIe and DisplayPort signals and encodes those for the TB network. There is a TB controller inside the peripherals where the controller does the same in the reverse; decodes back into the native PCIe and DP formats. The host and other protocol controllers on either side don't "see" any TB. TB is just used to transport from one box to another box.

If there is a blockage it isn't TB. It would be in the drive controller on the other side.

It also seems some TB enclosures might just use Thunderbolt->To another interface (USB or FireWire)->SATA, using something like an Oxford 946 chipset (which doesn't seem to support TRIM) to reduce costs.

The Oxford 946 is a RAID chipset.

http://www.datasheetarchive.com/OXUFS946DSE-datasheet.html

Most RAID controllers, especially inexpensive ones, don't pass through TRIM commands. They present a virtual drive and their virtual drive simply chooses to throw away the TRIM commands ( which technically is OK for a drive to do. ). Most RAID controllers are optimized for HDDs which don't need those SATA metadata commands that SSDs do. So it is just thrown away.

What a simple TB enclosure needs is just a simple SATA controller that will connect to the SATA SSD. ( in a PCIe SSD case even simpler... just hook the PCIe SSD to the TB controllers PCIe pins. ) . If a single drive enclosures throws away TRIM just shouldn't buy it. That just suggests it is a crappy drivers and controller implementation. The drive should look to the Mac like it was internal ( on the SATA tree in System Profiler/Information )

There could be a "mutli-protocol" controller inside that presents alternative ports USB when not using the TB port. The general problem with USB/Firewire/etc is that they aren't SATA. So they don't do a good job of passing SATA commands. ( there are work driver work-arounds but they typically aren't standard and may/may not be present.)
 
But again trim isn't supported over USB 3.0 on any platform, so this would only help Thunderbolt devices.

Going forward there are going to be more and more PCIe SSD where USB is kind of goofy to use as an interface. Going from PCIe to USB and back to PCIe (at the back end of the USB controller) is likely a bottleneck. if these are "maximum performance" external SSD then probably don't want to use USB anyway in the future.

If it is an inexpensive SSD then not having top end performance isn't the primary criteria. Modern drives working on mainstream, "normal" file create/delete sequences (with normal amounts of idle time) can do OK without TRIM. The sky isn't going to fall if don't make the calls if have decent amount of reserve space and don't push the drive into a corner case.
 
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