Some quick SSD Advice? My boot drive died!

[mikehalloran]

OK, so please forgive my ignorance on this topic, but with all this testing in mind what should I expect the life span of an SSD to be if I use it as my boot drive. Doesn't OSX constantly read and write to the boot drive for it's virtual memory stuff (or what ever it's called now)? Are we talking longer or shorter than a typical HD? Most of what I read talks terabytes but then fails to give similar data for HDs.

Phil

The real answer is that no one knows except that it's a long time with recent drives. The ratings are for extremely intense uses. Any of the recent drives will be fine. Some are guaranteed for ten years. How many HD have ever had that? More than none?

[HCMarkus]

Are we talking longer or shorter than a typical HD? Most of what I read talks terabytes but then fails to give similar data for HDs.

Phil

Longer.

I posted a link a while back to a site that has been running endurance testing on a bunch of SSDs. The first to die waited until, as I recall, over 700 TB had been written. At least one drive was still going at 1.5 PB. NOw, I'm not feeling in the mood to do the math, but I sincerely doubt that you or I or anyone doing audio work is gonna' burn through a modern SSD before the computer housing it is on its way to the graveyard.

Just do it Phil. But always backup ALL drives, no matter the species, gender, or age. The hair you save may be your own.

[Phil O]

Thanks guys. I'm seriously considering it. Got my eye on a Samsung Evo. What about this kext signing thing? Is it really risky to turn it off for the sake of Trim? As long as I practice safe computing am I ok, or can opening an innocent looking e-mail get me screwed?

Phil

[tremo]

Thanks guys. I'm seriously considering it. Got my eye on a Samsung Evo. What about this kext signing thing? Is it really risky to turn it off for the sake of Trim? As long as I practice safe computing am I ok, or can opening an innocent looking e-mail get me screwed?

Phil

This thread talks about the pros and cons of the Yosemite/TRIM/kext signing thing:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1807889

For now I'm (regretfully) leaving TRIM off....

[Phil O]

So I just ordered a Samsung Evo 120GB and a Newer Tech adapter (Thank you, James for the link to that). The Evo was $75 from Amazon. For 75 bucks I'll take the hit and run it under Yosemite without Trim. We'll see how it performs with Trim turned off. If it doesn't work out, it wasn't that expensive an experiment. If I get a couple of years out of it, I'll be happy.

Philippe

[HCMarkus]

I take it you are on Yosemite Phil, 'cause no previous version of Mac O/S has the kext issue.

A strategy that you and others running Yosemite may wish to consider is to have a second boot drive under ML or Mavericks with Trim enabled, then periodically boot from that system and perform a Repair Disk operation on your Yosemite boot SSD (and any other SSDs you may have) in Apple's Disk Utility. This will automatically Trim the disk. If you maintain adequate spare area (don't fill your SSD to capacity), and Trim periodically as noted, you should be able to keep your drive in optimum condition.

If you are not on Yosemite, Cindori's Trim Enabler is a simple way to keep Trim enabled at all times.

You will went to check the firmware version of the Evo drive when you receive it, and update if necessary to avoid the stale data issue recently corrected by Samsung.

[James Steele]

Ugh. I forgot about this. So Trim Enabler is now no good under Yosemite? Thanks Apple.

[mikehalloran]

Ugh. I forgot about this. So Trim Enabler is now no good under Yosemite? Thanks Apple.

It works fine. That's not the issue.

If, however, you boot with the .kxt enabled but not Trim Enabler working, there's a list of Terminal commands that need to be run first. Or you need to boot into another drive and fix it from there.

In any case, read the caution on the Cindori site and embrace it if you continue to use Trim Enabler. I have no issue but I will be very careful that I never clear the NV RAM (PRAM) unless I have turned Trim Enabler off first and rebooted.

http://www.cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite/

The only way that Trim Enabler can work in Yosemite is to disable kxt checking in the OS. This is not an issue in Mavericks.

[James Steele]

Ugh. I forgot about this. So Trim Enabler is now no good under Yosemite? Thanks Apple.

It works fine. That's not the issue.

If, however, you boot with the .kxt enabled but not Trim Enabler working, there's a list of Terminal commands that need to be run first. Or you need to boot into another drive and fix it from there.

In any case, read the caution on the Cindori site and embrace it if you continue to use Trim Enabler. I have no issue but I will be very careful that I never clear the NV RAM (PRAM) unless I have turned Trim Enabler off first and rebooted.

http://www.cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite/

The only way that Trim Enabler can work in Yosemite is to disable kxt checking in the OS. This is not an issue in Mavericks.

Thanks so much, Mike! I would like to keep using Trim Enabler. I'll read that.

[James Steele]

So I just ordered a Samsung Evo 120GB and a Newer Tech adapter (Thank you, James for the link to that). The Evo was $75 from Amazon. For 75 bucks I'll take the hit and run it under Yosemite without Trim. We'll see how it performs with Trim turned off. If it doesn't work out, it wasn't that expensive an experiment. If I get a couple of years out of it, I'll be happy.

Philippe

I ended up not even using the adapter thanks to a suggestion I saw here. You can move your optical drive in your MacPro to the lower slot, then use the top of the optical drive as a little shelf set set your SSD drive on top of it. I used velcro to hold the SSD to the top of the optical drive. There's a spare power and SATA connector already there for a second optical drive and I just plugged it in and got to keep all my other hard drive bays full.

[Phil O]

A strategy that you and others running Yosemite may wish to consider is to have a second boot drive under ML or Mavericks with Trim enabled, then periodically boot from that system and perform a Repair Disk operation on your Yosemite boot SSD (and any other SSDs you may have) in Apple's Disk Utility. This will automatically Trim the disk.

Does the second drive have to be a SSD with Trim or can I boot from any disk and run Repair Disk?

You will went to check the firmware version of the Evo drive when you receive it, and update if necessary to avoid the stale data issue recently corrected by Samsung.

Yeah, I read about that earlier in this thread. I've already downloaded the update. Thanks

I ended up not even using the adapter thanks to a suggestion I saw here. You can move your optical drive in your MacPro to the lower slot, then use the top of the optical drive as a little shelf set set your SSD drive on top of it. I used velcro to hold the SSD to the top of the optical drive. There's a spare power and SATA connector already there for a second optical drive and I just plugged it in and got to keep all my other hard drive bays full.

My machine gets moved around a lot. I considered the velcro route, but paranoia got the best of me. It strikes deep. Into your life it will creep...

[James Steele]

Haha... I hear you. I have the wide velcro tape where you stick a strip with the loop one one surface and the hooks on another. Seriously, the SSDs are so light and I have the heavy duty tape I use to hold down pedal effects in my rack drawer, that it's not going anywhere! But in my case, I didn't have a drive bay free anyway.

As for Trim Enabler, I just downloaded the new 3.3 version, launched it, agreed to disable kext checking at boot, and then restarted as in its instructions. Then next reboot, I launched Trim Enabler, turned it on, and then had it reboot again.

Now this is key... the next reboot, after enabling it, my MacPro rebooted and the screens were both black and I could see my mouse cursor and move it, but it appeared "stuck." I didn't panic and just waited... after a while, it rebooted again and then came up as normal. I launched Trim Enabler and it showed that trim was enabled on my 840EVO.

[mikehalloran]

The big difference between Trim Enabler 3.26 and 3.3 is the extra level of caution and layer of warnings. I'm good with that.

Does the second drive have to be a SSD with Trim or can I boot from any disk and run Repair Disk?

Apparently not but I haven't tried it. Per this page, you should see it in Console.

http://apple.stackexchange.com/question ... free-space

Since I have my internal (mechanical) drive on Mavericks, I'll boot into that this weekend and see and see what Console says.

[James Steele]

The big difference between Trim Enabler 3.26 and 3.3 is the extra level of caution and layer of warnings. I'm good with that.

Was 3.26 released prior to Yosemite, though? I don't recall 3.26 telling me anything when I tried to turn it on in Yosemite. Although, I think it just turned off by default after I installed Yosemite over Mavericks. Either way, I'm okay with things now. I don't really install kexts from flakey sources.

[mikehalloran]

Was 3.26 released prior to Yosemite, though?

Yes. Kext checking was enabled in a late beta release and 3.25 didn't work for those testerso he did 3.26.

Trim Enabler 3.3 was released a day or two after the public release of OS 10.10.

I used 3.26 after I updated to Yosemite, too, with no problem. Two days later, I found the cautions, 3.3 and my experience was same as yours.