MOTUnation.com

Interesting. I assume the fix for the Samsung SSDs will be widely announced. I don't think I registered it with Samsung or anything like that so I'll have to keep my ear to the ground. I wonder how you do a firmware upgrade on an SSD? Will we be able to just run a utility that will flash the drive? Hmmmm....

James Steele wrote:Interesting. I assume the fix for the Samsung SSDs will be widely announced. I don't think I registered it with Samsung or anything like that so I'll have to keep my ear to the ground. I wonder how you do a firmware upgrade on an SSD? Will we be able to just run a utility that will flash the drive? Hmmmm....

Might take booting into Windows. If I hear anything, I'll report it.

I just bought a 1T 845 EVO on eBay under $400. It's the 'enterprise' version of the 840 EVO. The difference is that the 845 has a bank of capacitors acting as a battery to supply enough juice to keep the drive powered till it finishes its tasks in case of a power outage. Way Cool Feature …but really I bought it because it was under $400.

Yes, I know there seems to be a firmware issue with the 840/845 but it's with Garbage Collection. I think that Trim will make it a non-issue for me (at least till Samsung updates the firmware as has announced they will -- someday). If I can get the Terminal commands to enable Trim over eSATA, I should be good to go. If it really works out well, I'll pay to have it installed into my iMac.

I had never heard of the 845 till I saw the auction. I'll post how it works out, of course.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sam ... ,3838.html

If Samsung doesn't take care of it quickly enough, reports suggest a quick clone then clone back will refresh the TLC NAND.

If a more elegant fix is not possible, I could see Samsung updating firmware to periodically refresh the entire drive internally.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8570/firm ... tober-15th

Samsung fix reportedly to arrive 10/15:

We acknowledge the recent issue associated with the Samsung 840 EVO SSDs and are qualifying a firmware update to address the issue. While this issue only affects a small subset of all 840 EVO users, we regret any inconvenience experienced by our customers. A firmware update that resolves the issue will be available on the Samsung SSD website soon. We appreciate our customer’s support and patience as we work diligently to resolve this issue.

I expected my 845 EVO to arrive next week but it appeared yesterday so I figured, why not? I installed it in an eSATA dock which took 2 seconds. My latest Time Machine backup was used to install (de-activating my internet authorizations first, of course). This took 7 hours as all my time capsules are over ethernet. By comparison, a recent clone over eSATA to a 7200 HD took ten hours (my main drive has about 800G on it.

Once set up and rebooted, I tried to enable Trim via Terminal command. No matter which variation I tried or how many times I rebooted, every time I checked About This Mac, I saw, Trim Support: No

I normally use Chrome which opens 60+ tabs in two windows and takes up to 10 minutes plus another 3-4 minutes on days that I reboot. This is now averaging 20 seconds. Holy S...! I'm glad I didn't wait the extra three weeks to install.

Anyway, I downloaded Trim Enabler and clicked the button and rebooted. That's all you do. Now I check About This Mac and see, Trim Support: Yes. Fine... I'll give them the $10.
http://www.cindori.org/software/trimenabler/

If I have to reinitialize my drive when the Samsung firmware update comes about, it won't be a big deal.

mikehalloran wrote:Anyway, I downloaded Trim Enabler and clicked the button and rebooted. That's all you do. Now I check About This Mac and see, Trim Support: Yes. Fine... I'll give them the $10.
http://www.cindori.org/software/trimenabler/

Absolutely. I happily paid my $10 for that gem!

Yea, My time is easily worth the 10-spot. That he already has it working in Yosemite is another bit of good news. He doesn't know if he has to add another line of code or not–there's an argument that may or may not be in Yosemite when it's released.

I have no problem with Terminal and use it all the time. I'm betting that what I found probably had capitalization or other syntax errors that were fine through OS 10.8.x.

A lot of sloppy commands were tightened up in Mavericks, however. Through 10.8.x, there were a number of versions of the following for show/hide hidden files. Now this is the only version that works–but it works all the way back to OS 10.2:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

killall Finder

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE

killall Finder

I won't quote any of the variants that no longer work.

I understand the need to mitigate end user-triggered problems, but I wonder if Apple might be persuaded to lighten up on this Forever War against its own users who aren't satisfied with an Apple OEM drives Only policy and just want to use trim?

But I guess those who like and appreciate postmarket hardware customization are "legacy" users now, as Apple moves towards elimination of the possibility of such. Certainly better for their bottom line, but just makes me want to hold on to my 2009/12 MP and 2010 MBP all the tighter for as long as feasible.

I am guessing that, since this issue goes all the way back to OS 10.6, that some early SSD had trouble with Trim.

Trim is part of the OS. The Apple code blocks Trim from non-Apple SSDs. The enablers unblock the Apple restriction so technically, they don't enable anything since without Apple's restriction, Trim would work with everything that supports it.

mikehalloran wrote:The enablers unblock the Apple restriction

Might we expect 10.10 to block the unblocking enablers?

Might we expect 10.10 to block the unblocking enablers?

There's an extra layer of code in the 10.10 beta but no one knows if it will be in the release version. If not, then the current version of Trim Enabler will work. If that code is there, Trim Enabler will have to be updated for Yosemite but he already has it ready to go–just waiting to see what Apple does.

No one is speculating that the blocking code will be gone. Could happen … after all, this is Apple.

Trim Enabler 3.26 running fine on Yosemite b5 here.

Here's info on the firmware patch Samsung has released for their EVO drives:

http://techreport.com/review/27212/sams ... h-old-data

Note that the patch is for Wondows only, but a version for Mac users is supposed o be released by month's end.

I've updated to Yosemite and booted Trim Enabler. I got a pop-up that says it needs to turn off kext signing (as required by the OS 10.10 beta). Went to the web site and saw the following:

Q. Hello,

I’m using Mac OS 10.9.5, and trim enabler 3.2.6.

I would like to update to Yosemite when it will be available.

Do I have to do some special commands in mac OS before updating it, or I can update to Yosemite, and it wil will boot without any problems, and then run trim enabler?

A. Wait until tomorrow and I will make an post about it. Currently the App Store seems overloaded and so I have not had a chance to test on Retail Yosemite.

So I will wait till tomorrow and see what Oskar says.