Some quick SSD Advice? My boot drive died!

[HCMarkus]

When operating your Mac under any pre-Yosemite OS, kext signing is off. So when you boot from your alternate drive with Trim enabled, you can Trim your SSDs. This communicates to the SSDs which files have been erased (Trim informs SSDs what the OS already knows) so the SSD knows which cells can be erased in advance, saving wear and tear on your SSDs. When you boot back into Yosemite, Trim is off, but the information was previously passed to the SSD when the drive was Trimmed.

So let me see if I have this straight.
1) Install Trim Enabler on my pre-Yosemite drive (it's a spinner with Mavericks).
2) I boot from Mavericks and turn Trim on with Trim Enabler.
3) Run Disk Utility and repair my SSD.
4) Re-boot from my SSD (running Yosemite).

Correct?

Yes, with a couple of clarifications:

A. After step (2) above, you must re-boot to allow Trim to take effect before you take step (3).

B. You won't need to Trim your new drive until you've used it a while. How often you'll need to Trim depends on how much spare area you have and how much erasing you do on the drive. And if you never get around to it, the SSD will still probably work fine. It will run circle around your spinners, especially as a boot drive

[Phil O]

Thanks Mike and HC. You've cleared up much confusion in my easily confused brain. I really do appreciate the time you've taken to help me out.

Phil

[HCMarkus]

Thanks Mike and HC. You've cleared up much confusion in my easily confused brain. I really do appreciate the time you've taken to help me out.

Phil

You are certainly welcome. I, and many others I'm sure, appreciate your input around here Phil.

[mikehalloran]

Thanks Mike and HC. You've cleared up much confusion in my easily confused brain. I really do appreciate the time you've taken to help me out.

Phil

You are certainly welcome. I, and many others I'm sure, appreciate your input around here Phil.

Agreed! It was your questions that helped me figue out and test some of the answers for myself (and figure out that much of the "info" on other boards is wrong). Between you and HCMarcus, I understand things much better than I did before.

I feel that I'm ready to write a term paper on the subject. Thank goodness those days are over.

[Phil O]

This post was VERY helpful:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5132196

"Creating bootable DVDs from .iso by converting to .cdr first" -- I never would've known to do that!

Great link, tremo. This saved me time and headaches. I just made the bootable firmware disk. It all went without a hitch. Thanks for the heads-up.

Phil

[Phil O]

My EVO 840 arrived, I've installed it, and it's up and running. Snnnnnappy!

Thanks again guys for all the help.

Phil

[HCMarkus]

My EVO 840 arrived, I've installed it, and it's up and running. Snnnnnappy!

Thanks again guys for all the help.

Phil

Ain't it a peach?

[Phil O]

Peachy indeed!

[Phil O]

I am lovin' this SSD. How's yours working out, James?

[James Steele]

I am lovin' this SSD. How's yours working out, James?

Happy as a clam here. I still have my home folder on a spinner, though, so I may be not getting as fast performance as I could. But still happy.

[Phil O]

Good to hear it.

[davedempsey]

I may not need to worry about TRIM - particularly as neither of the SSDs will be a boot drive.

Not an issue. Trim is already enabled. As I showed above, if you run Disk Repair on your Thunderbolt externals, it will run Trim automatically.

If you connect the externals via USB 2 or 3, you cannot Trim them.

Finally got the new Macbook Pro (Apple took a couple of weeks to supply the non-retail configuration). Up and running with the 2 Crucial SSDs in an external Thunderbolt case. Trim does not work for the external SSDs. Whereas I see the trim reported in Disk Utility for the internal storage it is not seen for the externals
Here's the system profile info for one of the externals:

Capacity: 512.11 GB (512,110,190,592 bytes)
Model: Crucial_CT512MX100SSD1
Revision: MU01
Serial Number: 14340D0BB5C1
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: Yes
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk3
Medium Type: Solid State
TRIM Support: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified

[mikehalloran]

How do you have your externals connected?

[davedempsey]

They're in an Akitio Neutrino Thunder D3 connected via Thunderbolt.

[HCMarkus]

Dave, not using TB myself, I just did a little internet research and located a number of references to Trim being supported via TB. I wonder if there is an issue with your enclosure...