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SSD users, is OS X TRIMing for you?

TheStrudel

TheStrudel

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 5, 2008
1,134
1
As I've read, TRIM is a relatively young technology and neither omnipresent nor completely supported by all drivers and OSes. What I have read is that OS X has the hooks for TRIM through ATA implemented, so if your drive has proper TRIM support, OS X will TRIM it properly. Is this true? How have your experiences been so far?
 
If it's enabled through the ATA protocol as I have read, it should theoretically work on some drives with a firmware update.

Though alternatively, I would like to hear if the garbage collection present on some drives is preventing performance degradation for some of you.
 
Why is apple taking so long to properly support SSD drives?

I don't understand the logic behind apple; they release the macbook air, a fail of a laptop yet glamourize it beyond belief and slap an SSD drive inside it, and this was a LONG time ago. They release OS X Snow Leopard which was supposed to get a ton of 'under the hood' improvements, and NOTHING has been done to one of the most vital improvements in computing technology (for consumers). SSD drives are a HUGE leap forward, and apple has yet to do ANYTHING about it.

Is it even possible for a 10.6.2 or later update to resolve this issue? TRIM would be such a nice bonus, or garbage collection. I'd buy an SSD drive now, but I see no point in getting technology thats going to be 'old' relatively soon, although 'relativity' is more of a question mark if the drives are going to be properly supported by Apple.
 
Garbage collection and TRIM are present on the firmware of some drives...it just remains for the OS to support it properly on ATA calls (and the garbage collection is theoretically automatic regardless of OS). From what I've read, it should at least in a limited sense. Has anybody seen either of them working?
 
TheStrudel said:
Garbage collection and TRIM are present on the firmware of some drives...it just remains for the OS to support it properly on ATA calls (and the garbage collection is theoretically automatic regardless of OS). From what I've read, it should at least in a limited sense. Has anybody seen either of them working?
Click to expand...

I've been using an Intel 80GB X25-M for several months and I certainly don't notice any slow down. I'm only using about 20GB of it. I did install the latest firmware upgrade, but I don't know of a way to determine whether TRIM is at work or not.
 
ungraphic said:
Why is apple taking so long to properly support SSD drives?

I don't understand the logic behind apple; they release the macbook air, a fail of a laptop yet glamourize it beyond belief and slap an SSD drive inside it, and this was a LONG time ago. They release OS X Snow Leopard which was supposed to get a ton of 'under the hood' improvements, and NOTHING has been done to one of the most vital improvements in computing technology (for consumers). SSD drives are a HUGE leap forward, and apple has yet to do ANYTHING about it.

Is it even possible for a 10.6.2 or later update to resolve this issue? TRIM would be such a nice bonus, or garbage collection. I'd buy an SSD drive now, but I see no point in getting technology thats going to be 'old' relatively soon, although 'relativity' is more of a question mark if the drives are going to be properly supported by Apple.
Click to expand...

none of the drives apple ship with their computers support trim
no reason for them to implement it yet.
 
jazz1 said:
I've been using an Intel 80GB X25-M for several months and I certainly don't notice any slow down. I'm only using about 20GB of it. I did install the latest firmware upgrade, but I don't know of a way to determine whether TRIM is at work or not.
Click to expand...

I haven't noticed any slowdown either, but look at my Xbench score below... The random writes have slowed down dramatically. I hope a maintainance tool will becoma available for osx asap.

I bought my macbook about 6 weeks ago, and put an Intel x25-m in it right away. I have 30GB in use (out of 80GB), I don't use any applications that make heavy use of a harddisk, but have been using the notebook 4-5 hours a day on average.


On the day I bought it:

Disk Test 222.20
Sequential 139.61
Uncached Write 139.37 85.57 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 122.37 69.24 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 92.90 27.19 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 393.80 197.92 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 544.03
Uncached Write 656.52 69.50 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 238.96 76.50 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1717.59 12.17 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 941.28 174.66 MB/sec [256K blocks]


Today, after installing the new firmware:

Disk Test 214.21
Sequential 169.24
Uncached Write 144.17 88.52 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 139.99 79.20 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 140.89 41.23 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 407.08 204.60 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 291.73
Uncached Write 167.51 17.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 163.42 52.32 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1686.65 11.95 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 971.56 180.28 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
Have not yet upgraded firmware but here are my results. 160GB G2 installed two days ago..

Disk Test 299.01
Sequential 195.78
Uncached Write 136.71 83.94 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 155.55 88.01 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 219.73 64.30 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 468.10 235.27 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 632.49
Uncached Write 683.15 72.32 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 282.19 90.34 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2656.14 18.82 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1063.53 197.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
Random 291.73
Uncached Write 167.51 17.73 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 163.42 52.32 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1686.65 11.95 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 971.56 180.28 MB/sec [256K blocks
Click to expand...

Thats still a heck of a lot faster than most hard drives on the market.
 
UAofE said:
Thats still a heck of a lot faster than most hard drives on the market.
Click to expand...

Indeed, I'm really glad I bought it (had some doubs because of the high price first), it really gives a next gen experience. And the low random write performance might just be an xbench issue, when I benchedmarked my disk a few times more, it appeared that the strangely low value of 17MB/s was now something like 50MB/s...
 
Here is my numbers after upgrading to latest intel firmware.
 

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Hmm. I didn't see that coming, though I guess Win7 hiccups were somewhat inevitable. There always seem to be gremlins of some sort with newer tech, be they hardware, software, or firmware...Hopefully it's ironed out by the time they bother to release for Mac.
 
To be completely honest, if you're just using it as a boot drive and for main programs.....the Trim won't really be noticeable.

I've been using an Intel 80GB Gen 1 in Windows 7 for months now and really never noticed any slow downs and that was with constant game install/uninstalls. However, if you're going to be writing and erasing large amounts of data to the drive, you're better off going with one of OCZ's drives or another that does firmware level cleanup. They are almost as efficient, and in some cases more so, than TRIM is on the Intel drives at restoring performance.

Just so no one blows a gasket thinking their pricey Intel drive will turn into a turtle. Even bogged down and rewritten dozens of times they're still snappier than some of the other name brand SSDs.
 
OCZ has a Mac version of there SSDs. I don't know why??
I don't it's a totally mac rip off thing.
 
ungraphic said:
Why is apple taking so long to properly support SSD drives?
Click to expand...
They support ssd's because they support sata and storage devices. What else is there to support besides TRIM? TRIM support itself is quite debatable these days as ssd's already have an alternative to that which is sometimes called NAND Launderer and sometimes Garbage Collection. It nearly does the same thing only TRIM could do it more efficiently because it works with the OS. The only problem is that only Indilinx Barefoot drives support TRIM and only Windows 7 with the right drivers and without using RAID. If you have anything else it won't work. Doesn't really matter as the garbage collection is a very good alternative, in some cases people didn't even notice the difference.
 
dyn said:
They support ssd's because they support sata and storage devices. What else is there to support besides TRIM? TRIM support itself is quite debatable these days as ssd's already have an alternative to that which is sometimes called NAND Launderer and sometimes Garbage Collection. It nearly does the same thing only TRIM could do it more efficiently because it works with the OS. The only problem is that only Indilinx Barefoot drives support TRIM and only Windows 7 with the right drivers and without using RAID. If you have anything else it won't work. Doesn't really matter as the garbage collection is a very good alternative, in some cases people didn't even notice the difference.
Click to expand...

Your are making valid points.

The bottom line here is that SSD technology is new and the technical issues have not been fully resolved. Why should Apple jump and provide TRIM support when that technology is not even standardized?

Look what happened to Microsoft when they decided to support TRIM. Windows 7 is perceived to be part of the problem even if it is, in fact, not. I bet they are sorry they did support TRIM now.

S-
 
Actually TRIM is standardised as it is now part of the ATA standard. Linux and OS X have some implementation of it but it is not the entire and complete implementation. There seem to be a lot of problems regarding TRIM for both OS people and ssd people. On the OCZ forum a lot of people experienced serious issues regarding sleep when they used the TRIM enabled beta firmware. This was also noted by the Super Talent users. This caused Indilinx to stop and pull the beta's and rework the entire firmware and fix it in the final version (yeah!). Intel also had problems with their TRIM firmware and pulled that too and probably fix it as well in the end. I think that if those things get fixed the OS's, drivers and controllers will follow. As you said, it is still early so we need to give it some time.
 
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