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Mac OS X doesn't support TRIM does it? I know a lot of people are gushing over the SSD drives but aren't they going to be bummed out in 12 months when it start

Mac OS X doesn't support TRIM does it? I know a lot of people are gushing over the SSD drives but aren't they going to be bummed out in 12 months when it starts degrading?

ugh 16y ago
“We started off this article making it intentionally limited in scope as we weren't expecting, in a OS that doesn't support TRIM, to find anything all that interesting. What we found was the exact opposite: an OS that doesn't appear to be affected by SSD performance degradation, at least if you stick to the SSD Apple provides - but if you do stick with that SSD, you get, by modern PC standards, decidedly substandard performance. This one raises many more questions than it answers, and we're going to investigate further.” — http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/apple/2010/07/01/mac-ssd-performance-trim-in-osx/7 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/apple/2010/07/01/mac-ssd-pe... TRIM itself doesn’t seem to be an issue. For whatever mysterious reason. (Or their methodology is in some way flawed.) Edit: Since we really shouldn’t be looking at the old MacBook Airs but at the most recent models, this review by Anandtech is certainly also helpful: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-11-13inch-reviewed/4 http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1... No more substandard SSD performance, TRIM doesn’t seem to be an issue. The author suspects that Apple’s custom firmware is to blame.
- statictype 16y ago
  Interesting. So TRIM isn't needed because newer Flash disks handle overwrites properly?
  - bradleyland 16y ago
    It appears that way. TRIM has always had its own issues. It doesn't work for disk images (hello, virtualization) or on RAID arrays. IMO, it was an interim solution to a problem that was looking for a lower-level fix.
m104 16y ago
You really think that Apple would let their SSD-buying customers twist in the wind? The people paying a premium, or buying an MacBook Air? You're saying that Apple hasn't had or won't have a way to make OS X love the SSD? Apple, the company that will probably be the first major computer manufacturer to eliminate the spinning disks, the company that is doing whatever it can to snatch up flash memory production capacity. That same company is going to let the performance suffer on, like, all of their devices? Really?
- statictype 16y ago
  Are you trying to make some point? If you have an answer, I'd be genuinely interested in hearing it, because as far as I know, that little thing is needed for SSDs to work properly over long term, since overwriting pages in a flash disk is significantly more costly than writing data to fresh pages. If you don't have an answer, well, your comment seems to be fairly content-free.
  - pclark 16y ago
    His point was that you think Apple hasn't carefully considered if all their SSDs are going to degrade over the next year or two?
    - statictype 16y ago
      Given the following data points: a) TRIM is generally needed to be supported by the OS in order to make SSDs work well over time (and is supported by Windows and Linux kernels, among others) b) Mac OS X up to Snow Leopard doesn't support TRIM I would tend to believe SSDs used by Mac OS X will degrade in performance over time. Clearly its possible that either (a) or (b) are wrong. In which case, it would be cool to hear which part I've gotten wrong (probably the first part). Telling me that 'Apple surely would have taken this into consideration as they love their customers and charge a premium for their products' doesn't really address it.
      - pmjordan 16y ago
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
yungchin 16y ago
From AnandTech's MacBook Air review: "The part number on the Toshiba controller may look familiar to some of you. It’s the same controller that’s in Kingston’s SSDNow V+ Series and the SSDNow V Series Boot Drive. I reviewed the latter not too long ago and found that it was a good drive for the money, and here’s the kicker: the SSDNow V Series Boot Drive was amazingly resilient when written to without TRIM support. Its performance hardly dropped as a result of normal desktop use. This is very important because although OS X 10.6.4 has a field for reporting TRIM support on an SSD, the instruction isn’t actually supported by the OS." http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-11-13inch-reviewed/4 http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1...
Tichy 16y ago
Some SSDs come with internal garbage collection, working around the TRIM issue. No idea how well it works out, though.
nika 16y ago
Please remember that TRIM is one solution, and Apple makes the whole widget. Which is to say, Apple can make their own SSDs (or set the specs for toshiba or whoever provides the modules) and put whatever support into the OS they need. TRIM, like all such standards, is a compromise born out of the need for different parties (namely OS makers and hardware makers who have different priorities) to agree on a common solution. Apple doesn't need to make such a compromise, and can thus produce a better solution. I'm not saying they will, they may not consider the issue sufficient for the effort required and may simply support TRIM, or they may decide that TRIM is the best practical solution for them. But in my experience watching Apple for a couple decades, them "doing nothing" and it seemingly being well past the time they should have done something, usually means that they are working on what they consider to be a much better solution, and it isn't yet ready. I think there's a lot of room for innovation in this fundamental shift from hard drives to SSDs.

Mac OS X doesn't support TRIM does it? I know a lot of people are gushing over the SSD drives but aren't they going to be bummed out in 12 months when it starts degrading?

ugh 16y ago

“We started off this article making it intentionally limited in scope as we weren't expecting, in a OS that doesn't support TRIM, to find anything all that interesting. What we found was the exact opposite: an OS that doesn't appear to be affected by SSD performance degradation, at least if you stick to the SSD Apple provides - but if you do stick with that SSD, you get, by modern PC standards, decidedly substandard performance. This one raises many more questions than it answers, and we're going to investigate further.” — http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/apple/2010/07/01/mac-ssd-performance-trim-in-osx/7 http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/apple/2010/07/01/mac-ssd-pe... TRIM itself doesn’t seem to be an issue. For whatever mysterious reason. (Or their methodology is in some way flawed.) Edit: Since we really shouldn’t be looking at the old MacBook Airs but at the most recent models, this review by Anandtech is certainly also helpful: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-11-13inch-reviewed/4 http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1... No more substandard SSD performance, TRIM doesn’t seem to be an issue. The author suspects that Apple’s custom firmware is to blame.

statictype 16y ago
Interesting. So TRIM isn't needed because newer Flash disks handle overwrites properly?
- bradleyland 16y ago
  It appears that way. TRIM has always had its own issues. It doesn't work for disk images (hello, virtualization) or on RAID arrays. IMO, it was an interim solution to a problem that was looking for a lower-level fix.

m104 16y ago

You really think that Apple would let their SSD-buying customers twist in the wind? The people paying a premium, or buying an MacBook Air? You're saying that Apple hasn't had or won't have a way to make OS X love the SSD? Apple, the company that will probably be the first major computer manufacturer to eliminate the spinning disks, the company that is doing whatever it can to snatch up flash memory production capacity. That same company is going to let the performance suffer on, like, all of their devices? Really?

statictype 16y ago
Are you trying to make some point? If you have an answer, I'd be genuinely interested in hearing it, because as far as I know, that little thing is needed for SSDs to work properly over long term, since overwriting pages in a flash disk is significantly more costly than writing data to fresh pages. If you don't have an answer, well, your comment seems to be fairly content-free.
- pclark 16y ago
  His point was that you think Apple hasn't carefully considered if all their SSDs are going to degrade over the next year or two?
  - statictype 16y ago
    Given the following data points: a) TRIM is generally needed to be supported by the OS in order to make SSDs work well over time (and is supported by Windows and Linux kernels, among others) b) Mac OS X up to Snow Leopard doesn't support TRIM I would tend to believe SSDs used by Mac OS X will degrade in performance over time. Clearly its possible that either (a) or (b) are wrong. In which case, it would be cool to hear which part I've gotten wrong (probably the first part). Telling me that 'Apple surely would have taken this into consideration as they love their customers and charge a premium for their products' doesn't really address it.
    - pmjordan 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

yungchin 16y ago

From AnandTech's MacBook Air review: "The part number on the Toshiba controller may look familiar to some of you. It’s the same controller that’s in Kingston’s SSDNow V+ Series and the SSDNow V Series Boot Drive. I reviewed the latter not too long ago and found that it was a good drive for the money, and here’s the kicker: the SSDNow V Series Boot Drive was amazingly resilient when written to without TRIM support. Its performance hardly dropped as a result of normal desktop use. This is very important because although OS X 10.6.4 has a field for reporting TRIM support on an SSD, the instruction isn’t actually supported by the OS." http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-11-13inch-reviewed/4 http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-1...

Tichy 16y ago

Some SSDs come with internal garbage collection, working around the TRIM issue. No idea how well it works out, though.

nika 16y ago

Please remember that TRIM is one solution, and Apple makes the whole widget. Which is to say, Apple can make their own SSDs (or set the specs for toshiba or whoever provides the modules) and put whatever support into the OS they need. TRIM, like all such standards, is a compromise born out of the need for different parties (namely OS makers and hardware makers who have different priorities) to agree on a common solution. Apple doesn't need to make such a compromise, and can thus produce a better solution. I'm not saying they will, they may not consider the issue sufficient for the effort required and may simply support TRIM, or they may decide that TRIM is the best practical solution for them. But in my experience watching Apple for a couple decades, them "doing nothing" and it seemingly being well past the time they should have done something, usually means that they are working on what they consider to be a much better solution, and it isn't yet ready. I think there's a lot of room for innovation in this fundamental shift from hard drives to SSDs.