Enabling TRIM support killed my performance

Feek · 22 Apr 2011 at 19:04

A while ago I used the TRIM enabler that I downloaded after reading about it in a thread on here.

It's difficult to tell at the time whether it made any difference to the performance of my Mac Pro but now I can say with 100% certainly that it really slowed my system down.

I'm involved with a couple of beta tests and I've noticed that I was getting quite a long delay whenever I dragged a file into my applications folder. A single 20Mb file was taking 15-20 seconds to copy which really isn't right. I had an issue where I wanted to rebuild my Launch Services database and Onyx took ages doing it. It was just little things which made me wonder if something was wrong.

I'd also enabled 64 bit boot mode shortly after enabling TRIM support so I've just done some testing. I rebooted back to 32 bit mode and performance still seemed sluggish. I then removed TRIM support and performance was back to how I'd expect it. I've since renabled 64 bit mode and it's all still super quick. Dragging an updated .app file into my applications folder is back to being instant.

All the while, Xbench reported normal speeds.

So just be aware, the TRIM enabler is not necessarily a good thing.

Spit · 22 Apr 2011 at 19:50

On the macrumours forum there are people getting beach balls all over the shop after enabling TRIM. Stay clear until Lion I thinks.

Westyfield2 · 22 Apr 2011 at 20:22

I stayed clear as I didn't want to have the early adopters curse!

Did you do the Terminal commands they suggest afterwards Feek?

Feek · 22 Apr 2011 at 21:20

No, I just ran the utility. I don't remember seeing any terminal commands.

I don't think I'll bother trying it again, I'll wait to see if full support is there in Lion.

FreeStream · 22 Apr 2011 at 22:09

What SSD are you using Feek?

Deku · 22 Apr 2011 at 23:11

Concorde Rules said:
What SSD are you using Feek?

My monies on an SSD with a sandforce controller.

Enabling TRIM for these drives does really hamper performance as 2 things are going on which are essentially doing the same thing so of course they clash and cause all sorts of problems.

Feek · 22 Apr 2011 at 23:21

OCZ Vertex 2. I believe it is one with a Sandforce controller.

Westyfield2 · 22 Apr 2011 at 23:51

He updated the program at www.groths.org at somepoint to include the commands, but if you did the driver hack with an older verison of the program/before he updated it the commands are:

Code:

sudo chown root:admin /
sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel
sudo kextcache -system-caches

My MacBook Air has an Apple SSD stick in it (so should get TRIM in Lion) but I've been too much of a pussy to try the driver hack myself!