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Set TRIM before a fresh install possible?

L

ls1dreams

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Aug 13, 2009
730
350
Hi all,

I'm installing a Samsung 840 EVO SSD with plans to do a fresh Mavericks install. I realized that TRIM won't be enabled from the start.

Is it OK to install and then enable TRIM after, or is there a way to do it ahead of time?

I don't like the idea of writing several gigabytes (8gb+) to a drive with no TRIM enabled.
 
You cannot enable TRIM on a non-Apple SSD before an installation. There is no problem in not having TRIM ever enabled on that, as well as most modern, SSD. That one has garbage collection and even without that it would outlast your Mac by about 10-20 years with constant writes.
 
Intell said:
You cannot enable TRIM on a non-Apple SSD before an installation. There is no problem in not having TRIM ever enabled on that, as well as most modern, SSD. That one has garbage collection and even without that it would outlast your Mac by about 10-20 years with constant writes.
Click to expand...

Good to know. Should I still enable TRIM anyway once the OS is installed?
 
If you want. It won't make much of a difference in the overall usability or longevity of the drive.
 
Intell said:
Because its their business to sell you more drives. Seagate would tell you that TRIM is dangerous in SSDs because that would lead to more HDD sales.
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How can telling a user that TRIM is recommended help them sell SSDs?

If TRIM were so unnecessary, why is it built in to OS X? Apple is notorious for dropping unnecessary technologies and standards.

As far as I know, even Seagate's SSDs support TRIM.
 
TRIM is the means by which an operating system can effectively communicate to an SSD controller which LBAs are actually allocated. When you delete a file from a filesystem, typically its just unlinked without explicitly clearing the blocks that were occupied. From the perspective of the SSD controller, those blocks still contain valid data and a garbage collection run will try to save them unnecessarily.

You could blast an entire filesystem, but without TRIM the SSD controller will still think the disk is filled with valid data.

Anandtech reviews can provide a good illustration of what kind of impact to performance this can have. Granted, this is worst case while attempting to re-write an entire drive previously filled, but without TRIM at all this is what will ultimately occur given enough time and filesystem activity.
 
pastrychef said:
How can telling a user that TRIM is recommended help them sell SSDs?

If TRIM were so unnecessary, why is it built in to OS X? Apple is notorious for dropping unnecessary technologies and standards.

As far as I know, even Seagate's SSDs support TRIM.
Click to expand...

It's marketing and sales. That's how things like this are done.
 
TRIM is included in the latest working drafts of the AT Attachment 8 - ATA/ATAPI Serial Transport standard published by INCITS. This is not 'marketing'; this is evolution of the AT Attachment interface standard.
 
pastrychef said:
Where's the marketing? I don't understand.

I would assume that "TRIM not needed" would be a much better marketing feature.
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Guess a degree is required to see where the marketing is with that statement in reguards to using it to sell more of your products as opposed to your competitions'.
 
Intell said:
Guess a degree is required to see where the marketing is with that statement in reguards to using it to sell more of your products as opposed to your competitions'.
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You're going in circles and not answering the questions. Where's the marketing? Why do you keep telling people TRIM is not important?
 
pastrychef said:
You're going in circles and not answering the questions. Where's the marketing? Why do you keep telling people TRIM is not important?
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I can't put it into words. The marketing is there. It's something that a business/marketing major could water down.
 
Another user recently reported that they contacted Samsung and the rep had instructed the user to install TRIM through the enabler. I have always installed TRIM on all my SSDs and they seem to run better, but that is my observation and others seem to notice no difference. It seems that with TRIM enabled the GC runs more efficiently for the SSD.

And for some reason after the last reboot, the TRIM status has shown up for my drive finally.
 
The last SSD I bought for my (relatively) new MBP had an orange sticker on it - DO NOT ENABLE TRIM.

IIRC, Trim Enabler failed on this particular SSD as well. TE works nicely on my old MBP with a Samsung 830 installed.

WRT marketing - it's important to know that some of the best marketing is not noticeable. So to say "point to an example" is harder said than done, and even harder for the very best marketing.

It's not always blatant advertising.
 
Granted that there may be some SSDs don't need TRIM, I don't think it's a good thing to tell everyone not to enable it because some SSDs do benefit from having TRIM enabled.

Enabling TRIM does nothing to the SSDs. It affects a file in the OS.

Read the context:

Me: I've spoken to tech support from Crucial and they highly recommend TRIM.

Intell: Because its their business to sell you more drives. Seagate would tell you that TRIM is dangerous in SSDs because that would lead to more HDD sales.

I guess the boys at Crucial have some of the best marketing guys because I certainly didn't notice anything regarding TRIM when I made my purchase and it had nothing to do with my decision to purchase their SSD.

Blatant? Certainly not. Non-exisant? Maybe.
 
You're missing the additional context that is a prerequisite of a marketing/business degree. Any two companies would tell you that their product is better in some way than the others. They even go as far as too tell you that some features and technologies in their competitors' products are not stable or as good as they seem. Look at Apple and Samsung. They run marketing campaigns against each others' phones on a multimillion dollar level. It isn't something that I would expect people to comprehend with a simple overview as such within this thread without looking at the industry as a whole.
 
You are the one lacking knowledge. You just keep saying marketing marketing marketing. Yet, when asked, you "can't put it in to words". You don't seem to grasp the fact that you are wrong about TRIM not being needed.
 
TRIM isn't required on most SSDs in a consumer place because they'll replace the computer before the drive starts to show age from lack of it. On top of that, most SSDs have garbage collection built in. If TRIM was really all that important and amazing, it would have been a mandatory part of the SSD design where as early SSDs completely lacked support for it. If the marketing language escapes you, not my problem. Go take some classes upon the subject.
 
If a computer is in use, the built-in garbage collection will not happen. The built-in garbage collection waits for idle time to activate. If a user shuts down after using his/her computer, the built-in garbage collection may never occur.

If TRIM were not important, it would not be a part of the OS and the standard would never have been created.

If you are dumb enough to believe whatever marketing material you see, I can't help you.

Proof:

http://forum.crucial.com/t5/tkb/articleprintpage/tkb-id/ssd@tkb/article-id/84
http://hardware-review24.com/load/storage/sandisk_extreme_ssd_240_gb_review/7-1-0-141
http://www.techspot.com/news/52835-...-need-for-trim-overprovisioning-and-more.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/289314-32-trim-important <- Read post by Pinhedd

* Image is from hardware-review24.com
 

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If TRIM was really all that important and amazing, it would have been a mandatory part of the SSD design where as early SSDs completely lacked support for it.
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It would be nice, but technology standards don't work like this. Technology Standards groups are non-profit organizations and don't have any legal power to force manufacturers to adhere to their publications. Its very common for products to come to market that only implement part of a standard, or screw up a part entirely. USB was a total field-day in this regard when it first came on the scene. 802.11n is another great example, with many different vendors selling products that implemented different degrees of the "draft" spec and didn't necessarily work together.

It is very common for the actual technology to leap past the published standard. Discard commands as created by by the T13 group of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards have been in the working draft for the AT/ATAPI standard since 2008. The final specification is still pending, but this is how tech standards go. The idea that "TRIM" was cooked up by some marketing suit is laughable.

The only other solution to the problem that TRIM solves is to bake filesystem support directly into the controller's GC. Good luck finding any support outside of NTFS for it as this is a terrible non-future-proof solution.
 
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