To TRIM or not to TRIM?

"This results in a reduction of the number of erase cycles on the flash memory and enables higher performance during writes. The SSD doesn’t need to immediately delete or garbage collect these locations it just marks them as no longer valid."

Marks them how, for APFS?...

TrimForce establishes itself in very different ways for different disk data structures. One of our Mac Pro deployments uses an empty APFS formatted internal and boots to an enclosure housing one boot (Intel Series 530 SSD) and one user-data (Intel Series 520 SSD), both disks ship with hard-rubber mantles (durability). By default, macOS will TRIM only the MacPro internal disk. Manual Terminal TrimForce is required to TRIM the enclosure disks, even the enclosure boot disk is a manual TRIM! Intel and Western Digital units typically TRIM very well, so that omission is very odd. Making manual Terminal intervention mandatory.

• macOS High Sierra external boot completes TRIM conversion in less than 1 second

• Mac User a little sluggish TRIM conversion (compare time it takes most other similar disk-utility apps to process hundreds of gigabytes of app installers, code-works with some desktop image collections - TrimForce runs in 100 seconds pre-boot and 200 seconds post-boot, less than half the usual disk utility time to validate and tag-to-purpose, for this particular user disk)

• Once TrimForce is enabled, drive speeds appears to have doubled

• Apple TrimForce is carried into APFS from years of HFS+ deployment - APFS TRIM data sedimentation is an unknown. So, how fast and reliable will our disks be, over time?

SATA2 cold storage is our backup of backups - internal/enclosure SATA3 TRIM interaction with SATA2 would be another unknown. Linux/Windows can TRIM SATA2, but Mac Terminal cannot. They say, TRIM and no-TRIM work fine together.

We shall see what we shall see. Rlo’ti'shoni enhi’taken:iate [Iroquios].

All a third party app does is put a fancy "wrapper" around that command

and maybe adds some bells and whistles to give you info that is available

through OS X any way.

As to enable or not, depends on the particular drive. Best to check with the

manufacturer to see if they recommend using TRIM. With some manufacturer's

drives, TRIM actually interferes with what is done internally.

iamsatyam wrote:

I have a MacBook Pro 13" (Mid 2012) with i7, 8GB RAM and OS X El Capitan/macOS Sierra installed.

My stock HDD died, so I bought a new Samsung 850 EVO 500GB.

Drive is installed in the system, but I am reading about the TRIM support on third-party SSD's, and I am really confused.

Some are saying enabling it can cause data loss issues, some are saying you have to do it for better performance.

I want an expert opinion on this, Is it really advisable to enable TRIM?

If yes, should I use this command on terminal:

sudo trimforce enable

or use any third-party app?

or should I just leave as it is?

Thanks a lot!

Your command line is correct. No need for 3rd party.

The advantage of the TRIM command is that it enables the SSD’s GC (garbage collection) to skip the invalid data rather than moving it, thus saving time not rewriting the invalid data. This results in a reduction of the number of erase cycles on the flash memory and enables higher performance during writes. The SSD doesn’t need to immediately delete or garbage collect these locations it just marks them as no longer valid.

ref: http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-news/latest-buzz/garbage-collection-and-trim-i n-ssds-explained-an-ssd-primer/

http://osxdaily.com/2015/10/29/use-trimforce-trim-ssd-mac-os-x/

trimforce status from terminal, copy & paste:

system_profiler SPSerialATADataType | grep 'TRIM'

you can read the man page from terminal, copy & paste:

man trimforce | more

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), macOS (10.12.0), i7 480GB SSD 16GB RAM iPhone5 iOS10.0.2, Parallels10.0.2, HP OfficeJet Pro 8620

iamsatyam wrote:

Thanks for replying this fast.

So that means I can just enable it from terminal, and there is no risk. I was just worried because on few reddit threads, people complained about slow performance and data loss, after they enabled the TRIM.

Are there any noticeable difference in performance, if it remains disabled?

All new SSD will perform well, it is over time when allocated blocks and pages become used, you start to see a loss of performance.

You will have to do your own research and make your own decision on the issue—ultimately it is your loss or gain.

"TRIM doesn’t obviate the need for garbage collection—it works with garbage collection to more properly mark pages as stale. And you don’t need TRIM for garbage collection to work—but TRIM makes an SSD’s garbage collection more efficient."

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/ask-ars-my-ssd-does-garbage-collection-so -i-dont-need-trim-right/

There is much information to sift through.

I can say new Apple computers that ship w/ SSD have TRIM enabled by default.

Apple just within the last couple OS X, supply the TRIM command in terminal for 3rd party SSD (eliminating the need for 3rd party methods to enable TRIM) this should tell you something about demand of this functionality.

OWC a reliable Mac parts suppler says you can or cannot enable TRIM on their SSD—suppossedly they say their SSD do fine without TRIM. http://blog.macsales.com/31602-owc-ssds-built-to-perform-with-or-without-trimfor ce-command

I have also read reports here—in the ASC—where SSD that have bogged down over time and use, and by enabling TRIM has miraculously restored speed and performance.

I can say personally came to my own conclusion and enabled TRIM on my OWC Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G 480GB SSD as soon as I installed it new—and no issue to report.

All drives will fail over time, so always, always have a current backup plan in place no matter what you decide to do moving forward. How to create a boot clone

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), macOS (10.12.0), i7 480GB SSD 16GB RAM iPhoneSE iOS10.1.1, Parallels10.0.2, HP OfficeJet Pro 8620

iamsatyam wrote:

The command for enabling TRIM works on macOS Sierra too, right?

I am confident that with a little thought you will be able to answer this question yourself.

Also, FWIW, an appropriate quote from someone, "Your computer is not

a data storage device." Always keep multiple backups of your data external

to your computer.