TRIM necessary for a Sandisk Extreme Pro?

[Cradle6]

Hey guys,

I have a 2011 MacBook pro on Yosemite that I want to use the aforementioned SSD in.

Is TRIM really necessary for this drive? I think it has its own background garbage collection.

I definitely don't want to disable kext signing.

But I could downgrade the OS?

Or anyone have any other advice?

 

[maflynn]

From what I saw on google, it does do garbage collection, so that means there's no need to enable TRIM

 

[yjchua95]

Hey guys,

I have a 2011 MacBook pro on Yosemite that I want to use the aforementioned SSD in.

Is TRIM really necessary for this drive? I think it has its own background garbage collection.

I definitely don't want to disable kext signing.

But I could downgrade the OS?

Or anyone have any other advice?

Hardware garbage collection is never as good as TRIM.

Although TRIM is necessary to preserve its life, disabling kext signing is also undesirable.

So it depends on whether you want SSD performance longevity or security.

 

[ColdCase]

Garbage collection is not the same as TRIM. All SSDs since the beginning of time do garbage collection, some faster than others. An SSD can't recycle memory blocks if it thinks the OS is still using it. TRIM tells the SSD what memory is no longer used.

If you use less than 50% capacity, lack of trim is not likely going to be a performance factor for a long time. You can always reformat the SSD or erase free space when things get slow.

 

[Cradle6]

Okay, I have an idea.

What if I use the drive without TRIM, then I preform "trim maintenance" every few months.

As in, I disable kext signing solely to use TRIM to clear out all the unused cells.

Afterwards, I re-enable kext signing and continue to use without TRIM for another few months.

At least as long as apple is blocking third party SSDs from this. Is this a decent strategy to get the benefits of TRIM without the security risk?

 

[Weaselboy]

Okay, I have an idea.

What if I use the drive without TRIM, then I preform "trim maintenance" every few months.

As in, I disable kext signing solely to use TRIM to clear out all the unused cells.

Afterwards, I re-enable kext signing and continue to use without TRIM for another few months.

At least as long as apple is blocking third party SSDs from this. Is this a decent strategy to get the benefits of TRIM without the security risk?

Yosemite... many people do just that. You can enable TRIM then boot to single user mode and run the command "fsck -fy" (without the quotes) and that will TRIM all free space on the drive and restore performance. Then disable TRIM after you reboot.

 

[Cindori]

Read this:

http://www.cindori.org/trim-vs-garbage-collection/

 

[Cradle6]

^Right, so does that mean the "TRIM every few months but not all the time" trick is a good idea or not?

I get the difference between GC and TRIM, but I'm unsure of te importance of Kext signing.

 

[maflynn]

So I was wrong about not needing to use TRIM, sorry for the misinformation.

As for kext signing, I wouldn't get too worked up over it. The TRIM process is very safe and updates have not been impacted by it. I have it set on my Mac Mini and had not run into any problems.