SSDs- too late to enable trim?

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Killahurts
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SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by Killahurts »

Last winter I outfitted my old Mac Pro with 3 EVO 850s, and an OWC Accelsior E2 PCIe blade, all 1 TB. It started with the startup spinner needing to be replaced, but then I got SSD fever and bought more. I now have only one 4TB spinner left, for storage/archiving. Man, it was like buying a new computer! But...

I did not enable trim on these. I was actually advised not to by the store guy, because there were problems with the EVOs (turned out it wasn't really an issue with Macs, but I bought his story). I definitely don't want to wear out the performance of the drives, but I wonder if it's too late to turn trim on? Would I potentially mess things up? And if it's not too late, would it even be beneficial? The E2 blade is an OWC product and they claim that it's not necessary to enable trim for their SSDs, but I have to confirm that with them tomorrow. But the EVOs absolutely did need to have trim enabled. I have the startup/system drive, my DP projects drive, and a library/sample drive.

So the second part of my question is, how do I trim enable all the volumes, not just the startup drive? The Terminal command line to enable trim that we see out there is always for the startup drive, I've never found how to do non-startup volumes? Or does it turn it on for all SSDs at once? I'm running OS Sierra.

I've seen arguments here about the necessity of enabling trim or not.. this post is not about that, so let's not. It's to determine if I can still turn it on, after the fact, and if it will do me any good to do so. I've already determined that I should have enabled it initially.

Thanks!
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by mikehalloran »

T.R.I.M is part of the OS. When you enable it on the boot drive, it works on all attached SSDs including those connected via TB and USB (that last bit isn’t true for all earlier Mac OS). You cannot enable it on remote drives.

It’s a good idea to enable it on every boot drive. That way you don’t have to remember to do it later.

TRIM manages garbage collection which is designed to even out and extend the life of SSDs. Store guy was wrong as was OWC when they claimed you didn’t need it on their SSDs (their walk-back on that is amusing to read). You will not shorten your drive’s life by enabling TRIM — just the opposite.

Run this Terminal command in Yosemite 10.10.4 and later:

sudo trimforce enable

Enter your Admin password when prompted, then yes after you get the warning.

To enable TRIM in OS 10.7 to 10.10.3, find the right version of Trim Enabler at https://cindori.org
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by Killahurts »

Very cool Mike, thank you! But will it bring my drives back to optimal performance?

i.e. what is the difference between starting out running with TRIM enabled, and then enabling months down the road?

What I'm trying to ask is, do the drives suffer irreparable performance damage by not using TRIM over an extended period?

I'm going to run the command, as soon as I have backed everything up.
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by HCMarkus »

Assuming you are running Safari, after you enable Trim as Mike describes, restart your Mac from macOS Recovery and run Disc Utility > Disc First Aid, on your system drive as described here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

Click the "Details" toggle to show you what is happening as the process proceeds. As the process is nearing completion, you should see a note along the lines of "Trimmed Free Blocks".

If running an older, pre Recovery Partition OS version, you can access Disc Utility while booted from an alternate boot drive. Only your boot drive requires running from Recovery or alternate boot drive to effect Trim.

Also run Disc Utility > Repair Disc for all your other SSDs (from Recovery or from normally booted Mac) to bring the Trim state up to date.

You should then be good to go, as Trim will now be an ongoing process for all drives, including your boot drive.

Hope this helps. (PS: You might want to add your OS version to your signature.)

Edited to reflect "Disc First Aid" as proper tab reference in Disc Utility program.
Last edited by HCMarkus on Fri Nov 03, 2017 8:20 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by FMiguelez »

mikehalloran wrote:
TRIM manages garbage collection which is designed to even out and extend the life of SSDs. Store guy was wrong as was OWC when they claimed you didn’t need it on their SSDs (their walk-back on that is amusing to read).
:shock:

I bought their story too. A few years ago I bought 2 of OWC's SSDs, and they said enabling T.R.I.M. wasn't necessary.

So I suppose all you said applies to me as well. I've had them for 2-3 years. I haven't noticed problems, but I hope I didn't shorten their lives too much already.

But I don't get it... did they change their claim recently? Or do they still stand Katie Piper not enabling TRIM?

One more question: Do Time Machine and CCC backups get affected in any way after enabling TRIM on the computers? This won't mess any of that up, correct? Can I just keep them and keep doing them as usual?
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by mikehalloran »

TRIM has no effect on apps, Time Machine etc.

Data sectors fail once written to x number of times. TRIM is part of the data management system that allocates this wear over the entire drive, keeping one area of NAND from being used more than another. When you delete a file, garbage collection and TRIM go to work and the data is gone. Data recovery doesn’t work on SSDs.

This is why disk optimization cannot work but the attempt exposes the sectors to far more writes than they will endure otherwise. Likewise never engage Secure Erase or Write to Zeros (Disk Utility won’t do that anymore, either).
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by Killahurts »

mikehalloran wrote:Likewise never engage Secure Erase or Write to Zeros (Disk Utility won’t do that anymore, either).
I went to repurpose my wife's old laptop drive, a 480GB OWC Extreme, as a work drive on our video computer. She did not have trim enabled when she used it in the MacBook Pro, because the OWC guy said not necessary. After I erased the disk, I did a speed test. The read speed was fine, but the write speed was less than half what it should be. I called OWC, talked to the tech guy. The drive is still under warranty, but he told me to first try a low level format, i.e. Write to Zeros.

From what I've read here, I realize my suspicions were correct- he was trying to get me to get the drive back up to speed, at the expense of its lifespan.. maybe it would last until the warranty expires.

That drive is going back today. :wink:

I really appreciate all the info guys! I do have one other sticky question:

That video computer I mentioned is an iMac with Apple's hybrid drive. The 128GB SSD part of that has TRIM enabled already. Via a Thunderbolt dock (bare drives), I have 2 EVO 850s, and when I examine them in System Report, TRIM is not enabled. Is it OK use the Force Trim line in the Terminal and get those Samsungs onboard?

And, would I want to run that line with every new SSD drive I get for that TB dock? Actually, that question applies to a new non-boot SSD drive for any machine.
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by Killahurts »

HCMarkus wrote:Assuming you are running Safari, after you enable Trim as Mike describes, restart your Mac from macOS Recovery and run Disc Utility > Repair Disc, on your system drive as described here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

Click the "Details" toggle to show you what is happening as the process proceeds. As the process is nearing completion, you should see a note along the lines of "Trimmed Free Blocks"...
Fantastic! That is the kind of solution I was hoping for, and I would not have thought of it on my own.. thanks for that! :D
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by HCMarkus »

Killahurts wrote:
HCMarkus wrote:Assuming you are running Safari, after you enable Trim as Mike describes, restart your Mac from macOS Recovery and run Disc Utility > Repair Disc, on your system drive as described here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

Click the "Details" toggle to show you what is happening as the process proceeds. As the process is nearing completion, you should see a note along the lines of "Trimmed Free Blocks"...
Fantastic! That is the kind of solution I was hoping for, and I would not have thought of it on my own.. thanks for that! :D
It's actually called "Disc First Aid" now. I'll fix in my post above. And you're welcome! I learned this trick some years ago from a kind someone at MacRumors, and am happy to pass this updated info along.
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by mikehalloran »

It’s a neat trick. Not necessary since TRIM runs automatically on attached drives but it looks good to have done it.

It doesn’t work in High Sierra since there is no Repair Disk. If Disk Utility is run from 10.13 to an older SSD without APFS, it will TRIM that drive.
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by Killahurts »

mikehalloran wrote: It doesn’t work in High Sierra since there is no Repair Disk. If Disk Utility is run from 10.13 to an older SSD without APFS, it will TRIM that drive.
No repair disk? Wow! :lol:
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by mikehalloran »

Killahurts wrote:
mikehalloran wrote: It doesn’t work in High Sierra since there is no Repair Disk. If Disk Utility is run from 10.13 to an older SSD without APFS, it will TRIM that drive.
No repair disk? Wow! :lol:
Well there is one but things are different in OS 10.13 with APFS:

When booted into non-APFS drives or partitions, you cannot see APFS volumes or partitions.

There is a Repair Partition in 10.13 but it is actually an APFS Container. Think of it as a virtual disk and you won't far off.

Running Repair Disk from Disk Utility from APFS will not TRIM Unused Blocks on an APFS volume. You can run it to trim an attached non-APFS volume, however.

Option-boot does not bring up the Repair Partition on an APFS drive — only Command-R can. If, however, there's a non-APFS drive or partition in the system, Command-R will boot into it instead (and you won't be able to see any APFS volumes). For that reason, it's not such a good idea to have an APFS and a non APFS partition on the same drive unless the APFS drive is for testing. If you get into trouble, you can Option Boot or Command R into the Repair Partition of the non APFS partition only (my El Cap drive is on eSATA and I can turn it off to Command R into my High Sierra Repair Partition).

So what about TRIM? It works automatically on APFS drives and those attached if you enabled trimforce in Terminal. There is no need to run it manually which is also true for El Cap and Sierra.
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by leigh »

Last Fall when I put a 1TB EVO SSD into my iMac, the Apple tech asked me if I wanted it to be part of the Fusion Drive. I said go ahead.

I've just upgraded the iMac to High Sierra and the Fusion Drive can't be converted to APFS. Is it worth it to take the iMac back and have it be a simple SSD?

Also, I have two external SSD drives for audio and for sample libraries. These were not converted to APFS either. Is there a way to do that?

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Last edited by leigh on Sat Jan 06, 2018 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by buzzsmith »

Very interesting. Following.


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Re: SSDs- too late to enable trim?

Post by leigh »

Here's what I did to get the SSD's to be APFS:

• Copied contents to temp spinner.
• Used Disk Utility to erase SSD as APFS.
• Copied the files from the spinner back to the SSD.

The copies took a couple of hours in each direction but I had no problems.

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