SSD and Trim ??

steveo · 15 Feb 2012 at 11:38

ok i just managed to get a Kingston SSD in the MM and installed it in my MBP the drive is great and a hell of a lot faster than the drive before (duh) any way because its not a apple ssd trim is not enabled in lion with it, i have googled it and its possible to have it on but my question is should i enable it or is there a need to ?? its my first ssd and the Kingston has trim but am not sure if its needed and if i should force it on

Irish_Tom · 15 Feb 2012 at 13:39

I turned on TRIM when I upgraded my MBP to an SSD with Lion.

It's quick and easy to do, and it's supposed to increase the performance and longevity of the drive so I'd say go for it.

Beerbaron · 15 Feb 2012 at 14:33

not sure about apple products but normally its best to enable trim on an ssd

Marky · 15 Feb 2012 at 14:45

Anyone know how to enable TRIM? I was also wondering this...

pingwing · 15 Feb 2012 at 15:50

Trim enabler

Just have to run it ever time you update your mac (I keep forgetting)

http://www.groths.org/?p=308 go go go!

Marky · 16 Feb 2012 at 15:06

pingwing said:
Trim enabler

Just have to run it ever time you update your mac (I keep forgetting)

http://www.groths.org/?p=308 go go go!

Thanks for that

So you have to run it every time a mac update is downloaded and run?

EDIT:

Also, not much is showing as you can see - Is this normal?

pingwing · 16 Feb 2012 at 15:14

Marky said:
Thanks for that So you have to run it every time a mac update is downloaded and run?

No problem

yeah I think so, worth just running the app to double check its ok every time update happens and it's all good!

Donk · 16 Feb 2012 at 18:53

Hmm you shouldn't have to enable Trim after each update. When I updated the firmware the other week on my crucial m4 trim was still enabled.

uniQ · 16 Feb 2012 at 20:30

Which Kingston is it? Its worth checking but some of them already have aggressive garbage collection built in so may not benefit from activating Trim.

Cleeecooo · 16 Feb 2012 at 20:58

Beerbaron said:
not sure about apple products but normally its best to enable trim on an ssd

this, I was under the impression it was necessary for all SSD's to have it in order to stay fast and npot lose space randomly

MacRS4 · 17 Feb 2012 at 00:34

Donk said:
Hmm you shouldn't have to enable Trim after each update. When I updated the firmware the other week on my crucial m4 trim was still enabled.

It's more to do with the 10.7.1/10.7.2 updates etc. Patch to enable TRIM, update to 10.7.3 - you'll find TRIM turned off so you need to re-enable it again.

Irish_Tom · 17 Feb 2012 at 08:10

Donk said:
Hmm you shouldn't have to enable Trim after each update. When I updated the firmware the other week on my crucial m4 trim was still enabled.

MacRS4 said:
It's more to do with the 10.7.1/10.7.2 updates etc. Patch to enable TRIM, update to 10.7.3 - you'll find TRIM turned off so you need to re-enable it again.

I didn't have to re-enable TRIM after upgrading from 10.7.2 to 10.7.3 – that was with an M4 too.

Unless the system profiler is lying.

Deku · 17 Feb 2012 at 09:17

I've had a (sandforce based) SSD for about 7 months now and never enabled TRIM as I've always read horror stories about it mucking things up.

I just thought I'd give it a shot to see what happens with the link kindly provided by pingwing and the results were instant. It's like I've just put a brand new SSD in again, is this normal for the result to be instantaneous like this?

MacRS4 · 17 Feb 2012 at 18:54

Panzerbjorn said:
I didn't have to re-enable TRIM after upgrading from 10.7.2 to 10.7.3 – that was with an M4 too.

Unless the system profiler is lying.

I did - but then again I was using the developer 10.7.3 on my SSD equipped iMac so maybe it was that.

Marky · 17 Feb 2012 at 22:06

Hmm I'll just keep an eye out on it if I have to update my Mac.

arcamalpha · 18 Feb 2012 at 20:40

I've heard that TRIM shouldn't be enabled on some SSDs that have an inbuilt tidy-up function (such as the SandForce drives).

Anyone know anything about this issue?

BunnyKillBot · 20 Feb 2012 at 18:26

Personally i just use the terminal hack:

TRIM can be enabled by using the following Terminal commands. Copy these commands and run them in Terminal:
Backup the file that you’re about to patch:

sudo cp /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage /IOAHCIBlockStorage.original

Patch the file to enable TRIM support:

sudo perl -pi -e ‘s|(\x52\x6F\x74\x61\x74\x69\x6F\x6E\x61\x6C\x00).{9}(\x00\x51)|$1\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00$2|sg’ /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage

Clear the kext caches:
sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel
sudo kextcache -system-caches

Important: reboot your Mac!

To disable TRIM support in the future:

sudo perl -pi -e ‘s|(\x52\x6F\x74\x61\x74\x69\x6F\x6E\x61\x6C\x00).{9}(\x00\x51)|$1\x41\x50\x50\x4C\x45\x20\x53\x53\x44$2|sg’ /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage

Finally, if this does not work as expected, or if something goes wrong, simply restore the backup:

sudo cp /IOAHCIBlockStorage.original /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage

This patch simply edits a file called IOAHCIBlockStoage, removing a string that makes TRIM work for only Apple SSDs.

Worked for me.