Manual TRIM for SSD? Is it needed?

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trparky

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When you have an operating system that supports SSDs out of the box with support for TRIM built into the storage subsystem, like Windows 7 or 8. And you have the specified setting in Windows enabled to issue the TRIM command to the SSD.

My question is... knowing that you are running an OS that supports SSDs at the kernel level, do you even need to do manual TRIMs via the various tools that are available? (Intel SSD Toolbox, Samsung's SSD Magician, etc.) Is it a waste of time to run a manual TRIM? Is it even needed to be done?
 
trparky said:
When you have an operating system that supports SSDs out of the box with support for TRIM built into the storage subsystem, like Windows 7 or 8. And you have the specified setting in Windows enabled to issue the TRIM command to the SSD.

My question is... knowing that you are running an OS that supports SSDs at the kernel level, do you even need to do manual TRIMs via the various tools that are available? (Intel SSD Toolbox, Samsung's SSD Magician, etc.) Is it a waste of time to run a manual TRIM? Is it even needed to be done?
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It depends on the drive*. I've abused an M4 in my workstation for almost a year now. Its current benchmark are almost the same as the benchmark I ran when the drive is new.

I own other drives too. Since I'm on Windows 7 I don't worry about TRIM.

*Disclaimer. I have owned a drive where TRIM did not restore performance. (Vertex 2 just F you!). Recent drives shouldn't have this problem, but this is something that you need to research. On the Vertex 2, I had to do a secure erase to restore performance.
 
Not sure but my M4 has gotten slower and slower after 1-2 years. It's not even full and it should be set up properly. I recall it performing really well when I 1st got it, but recently running ATTO, it's been much slower.
 
JL6speed said:
Not sure but my M4 has gotten slower and slower after 1-2 years. It's not even full and it should be set up properly. I recall it performing really well when I 1st got it, but recently running ATTO, it's been much slower.
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Did you run initial benchmarks? I was running Windows 8, but something happened where my random performance became terrible.

Before this issue occurred I moved drives around and by accident I re-connected my drives to the non-Intel 3Gb SATA ports. I switched back to the 6Gb SATA ports, but performance was just as bad. No amount of reinstalling drivers would fix the problem on my M4 or 840 (which was brand new).

I don't benchmark often, but I had done so a couple of weeks before this happened and the M4 was fine. I'd love to know what caused my random numbers to tank.
 
Not to hijack the thread, but when you enable trim, does it do anything negative to the drive in terms of data corruption/loss or anything like that? I have an SSD for my Ubuntu install, and even though I'm not noticing any slow down this thread got me wondering if I need to consider enabling it.
 
JaSauders said:
Not to hijack the thread, but when you enable trim, does it do anything negative to the drive in terms of data corruption/loss or anything like that? I have an SSD for my Ubuntu install, and even though I'm not noticing any slow down this thread got me wondering if I need to consider enabling it.
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Well TRIM isn't supposed to cause any data corruption and I haven't heard of any such cases, so I don't thin there's any significant reason not to enable it.

Regarding the OP's question, I'd go with "no" for that one.
 
TRIM does not cause data loss or corruption.

TRIM explained simply is the OS directing the SSD to proactively erase blocks of NAND that contain data that is no longer needed (ie said blocks belonged to a file that had been deleted). This is done so that the blocks of NAND memory will be in an erased state and ready to be written to INSTANTLY when needed again. TRIM operations are done transparently during time when the SSD would otherwise be idle.

Unlike sectors on a mechanical hard drive data cannot be just written over on an SSD - The NAND memory used in SSDs HAS to be erased before it can be written to again. Without TRIM whenever you delete data (a file or whatever) the contents of the blocks on the SSD are left intact and when they are needed for new data the SSD's controller has to:

1. read the data from the blocks to see what's there
2. erase the data since it's old and belonged to a deleted file
3. write the new data
4. verify the new data

...which can slow down write speeds especially after the SSD has been used for a long time (months, years depending on usage habits). Without TRIM these 'garbage' data blocks steadily increase in number and write performance will slow down as the SSD has to do more read-erase-write-verify operations. Many SSDs now have built in 'garbage collection' which can help out a drive when used in a non-TRIM environment, but it's no substitute for TRIM.

With a TRIM enabled OS you should never have to worry about doing anything to the SSD other than using it normally. No manual TRIM, no secure erasing, just use the SSD and be happy.
 
The only use for these tools in an OS environment supporting trim would be to trim after having been running without trim for a time (either disabled, or SSD used as slave on another OS).
 
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