Apple quietly Trims MacBook Air SSDs

Owners of second-gen MacBook Airs have gained much-requested Trim support for the SSDs in their skinny computers thanks to Apple's latest OS X update. The Trim command can be issued to compatible solid-state drives to tell them which data are no longer considered in use and so can be erased by the drive itself. This …

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't work with upgrade SSDs?

I fitted my MacBook Pro with an OCZ Vertex 2, which according to the specs does support TRIM, but with the latest and greatest OS X apparently it doesn't.

[hexx]

try this

http://www.groths.org/?p=387 i just installed it on my mbp late 2009 with 120GB Vertex2 SSD and it works! Sys. profiler says that TRIM enabled = yes ;)

[Michael Hoffmann]

Does it actually work?

I tried the TRIM patch about a month or two ago on Crucial SSD-ed Macbook. After reading some of the comments on the site mentioned, about performance problems and even stability issues, I decided to uninstall it and wait for Lion.

The question is: just because it may say that it "works" - all we see is a TRIM enabled = yes.

Has anybody actually done benchmarking? Watched I/O traffic see TRIM ATA commands being issued?

Also, unless you start with a freshly reformatted SSD, what happens to blocks that had held deleted files in the "pre-TRIM" state? I suppose a SSD with GC will eventually get around to them?

PS: I love some of the comments on www.groths.org like this one "My PLEXTOR PX-128M2S thanks you, and I thank you. I enjoy a screaming fast laptop." Wow! Your laptop got faster just by installing that patch? /facepalm

[hexx]

wrong link

correct one: http://www.groths.org/?page_id=322

[Nick Galloway]

Short hair cut?

What happens if this feature decides to trim a file or block that you want having archived it but not used it. Apple has had a few 'features' before with powerful deletion capability!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Powerful Delete features

Apple's are mere feeble, blunt instruments compared to the delete tools used by some organisations.

Particularly useful when problematic court cases are on the cards. Very selective, and particularly effective.

[Anonymous Coward]

Title

Thank God, Apple saves the day once again with it's innovation!

[Anonymous Coward]

Did any testing body prove the need?

Has the "need" for TRIM ever been established for OSX? Most of the articles I have read in the past indicated that it was nbd with OSX, and critical to have in Windoze.

Dweeb

[hexx]

TRIM

is a ATA command AFAIK, why not support it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another reason

...to not "upgrade" to Lion.

Still waiting to see a "must have" feature in Lion (and no, stuff lifted from iOS and wedged in doesn't count for me). At this rate - with icloud in particular (at the moment) - I'm actually going to lose features (mobileme sync)!

[Big Bear]

RE: Did any testing body prove the need?

I think you'll find that TRIM is something that the drive manufacturers like to support, and is OS agnostic, and that even the Mac needs to do it to maintain high read/write throughput, assuming that is the reason you went for SSD rather than the usual "it's shiny" argument... and assuming Stevie J gave you the choice in the first place!

You're probably thinking of the whole defragmentation argument that Apple's HFS claimed to not need (it actually did it during file processing and in the background).

[Anonymous Coward]

No - read again.

You failed to read.

The reason I have SSD is beacuse it came in the "tin". I bought the "tin" because of the form factor.

I did not mention defragmentation.

I have not read even 1 article that suggests that TRIM is essential for OSX SSDs, and some that directly say otherwise.

So where is the evidence through testing?

I am not saying it's not there, just that I have never seen any references that seemed to support the idea - just kneejerk technodorks saying it is necessary because it IS on Windoze.

Dweeb