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Booting Thunderbolt iMac from LaCie Rugged SSD
- Thread starter shelt
- Start date
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Need? No, but over the long term it will help keep your drive running at peak speeds as you add and remove files. Use Groth's TRIM enabler. Apple has set up OS X so that it will not recognize and enable TRIM for any SSD except specified Apple SSDs. What Groth's program does is turn on the built-in OS support for TRIM for other SSDs. However, it only works for an internal SSD or for external SSDs on Thunderbolt. It will not work for SSDs on USB 3.0 -- and as a side note, TRIM isn't supported on USB 3.0 on Window either. I don't remember the details exactly, but as I remember it, it's because TRIM isn't supported on external drives. USB 3.0 shows up in OS X and Windows as an external drive, while Thunderbolt is an extension of the internal bus and shows up in the OS as an internal drive.
As an additional FYI, I have an 840 Pro in a Buffalo Thunderbolt enclosure running as my boot disk and used Groth's to enable TRIM, so I know it works fine with an 840 Pro.
I am now considering the Lacie 256GB SSD Rugged with Thunderbolt and adding the Groth's Trim Enabler as the PRIMARY DRIVE for my mid-2011 iMac.
Can you elaborate on "Groth's Trim Enabler?" I found it on the web and it appears to be a free download. What does it do to the Mac ? Is Groth's action reversible ?
Downside to using this add-on ? Can it cause other problems?
Anyone else using this Groth's patch with the Lacie Rugged SSD as primary drive ? Your experience would be appreciated.
Thanks for your comments.
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All you need is the LaCie !!
I just picked up the LaCie 256GB SSD Rugged with Thunderbolt (I'm actually using it on a USB port) and after a few days am having no trouble with it whatsoever. I didn't need anything called "TRIM". I just plugged it in, downloaded the Carbon Copy Cloner utility and within an hour booting off an external SSD. It's nice being able to boot the iMac in less than 20 seconds.
Also, I'm noticing a huge difference in the iMac over all. Everything is so much more snappy and silent. I highly recommend the LaCie drive given it's reputation for easy of use and reliability. If you want to try you hand at a faster (more trouble prone) SSD drive the LaCie comes with two cables, one for the USB and the other for the Thunderbolt. I *might* pick up the Pegasus Promise J2 later on down the road. But only as an extra, not as a boot drive as there is a glitch in the late 2012 iMac firmware that prevents the J2 from being bootable.
But I strongly recommend the LaCie. I've no idea what the "TRIM" thing is all about. The only TRIM I know of is part of QuickTime Player.
This does look interesting though;
http://www.groths.org/trim-enabler/
Well I downloaded and installed Groth's Trim Enabler and it reports that the patch is active and the info indicates that it works for all SSDs. It's only drawback is that it can only verify that it's working for Apple supplied SSDs. I can only assume it is working.
I just picked up the LaCie 256GB SSD Rugged with Thunderbolt (I'm actually using it on a USB port) and after a few days am having no trouble with it whatsoever. I didn't need anything called "TRIM". I just plugged it in, downloaded the Carbon Copy Cloner utility and within an hour booting off an external SSD. It's nice being able to boot the iMac in less than 20 seconds.
Also, I'm noticing a huge difference in the iMac over all. Everything is so much more snappy and silent. I highly recommend the LaCie drive given it's reputation for easy of use and reliability. If you want to try you hand at a faster (more trouble prone) SSD drive the LaCie comes with two cables, one for the USB and the other for the Thunderbolt. I *might* pick up the Pegasus Promise J2 later on down the road. But only as an extra, not as a boot drive as there is a glitch in the late 2012 iMac firmware that prevents the J2 from being bootable.
But I strongly recommend the LaCie. I've no idea what the "TRIM" thing is all about. The only TRIM I know of is part of QuickTime Player.
This does look interesting though;
http://www.groths.org/trim-enabler/
Well I downloaded and installed Groth's Trim Enabler and it reports that the patch is active and the info indicates that it works for all SSDs. It's only drawback is that it can only verify that it's working for Apple supplied SSDs. I can only assume it is working.
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Groth's lets you turn on the built-in operating system level support for SSDs. My understanding is that there's code in the Apple TRIM support that looks for an Apple SSD. If it doesn't see what it's looking for, then it doesn't let you turn on TRIM. Groth's changes a small bit of code so that the OS stops looking for an "Apple" SSD and lets you turn on TRIM support at any time.
The action is completely reversible. The support, however, does NOT work for USB 3.0 drives.
Thank you for your comments and advice, Nuke61 . . .
I used CCC to clone my HDD to a Thunderbolt connected external Crucial 256GB SSD and then installed TRIM by dragging the downloaded app to the app folder on the Crucial SSD.
Used BlackMagic to compare read and write speeds before and after TRIM and they were identical.
Is there any way to check to see if TRIM is actually working?
As far as reversing, it appears that all I have to do is drag the TRIM app from my Applications Folder on the SSD.
You *installed* Groth's, but you still need to *open* the program and turn it on. If what you've done so far is drag it to the app folder, you haven't enabled TRIM yet for the Crucial SSD.
There's no easy way to see if it's working. You'll simply have to take Apple and Groth's word for it.
You can open "SystemInformation/Serial-ATA" and look at your SSD to see if it says "TRIM Support: Yes" to verify if the system thinks it is enabled ... not exactly proof that it is "working" however.
You can verify it is actually working by doing a command-s boot to single user mode, then at the prompt enter "fsck -fy" (without the quotes) and hit enter. At the end of the scan you will see a message from fsck that unused blocks were trimmed if TRIM is working.
FANTASTIC!! I had no idea that FSCK had this ability. I just did what you suggested and at the end it said unused blocks were trimmed.
Thanks. I missed that.
Anyway, I used BlackMagic to test my iMac with the Crucial 256GB/Thunderbolt external primary drive with-and-without TRIM activated. Identical results for both read and write speeds.
Thanks. I missed that.
Anyway, I used BlackMagic to test my iMac with the Crucial 256GB/Thunderbolt external primary drive with-and-without TRIM activated. Identical results for both read and write speeds.
TRIM is not for speed but for......endurance?
Understand. But, I am pretty sure that I read that TRIM would also improve writing speed in SSD systems.
My mistake.
Not really. Even if you never used TRIM and ran the drive for years, endurance or lifespan would not be impacted. You could take a five year old drive that has never had TRIM, then turn on TRIM and trim unused space with Disk Util in Recovery or fsck, and performance would be restored to like new.
TRIM won't really improve write speeds on a new drive, it is more aimed at maintaining write speeds the same as when new. But yes, if you had a old, used drive that had never been TRIM'd and ran TRIM, write speeds would increase back to like new.
I think most of us would associate the word endurance with lifespan or longevity, but whatever makes you feel better.
I think most of us would associate the word endurance with lifespan or longevity, but whatever makes you feel better.
Lets's agree to disagree....
Crucial vs Samsung
Both 256GB installed as Thunderbolt connected external primary drive. Everything else identical. Groth's TRIM enabled on both drives. Crucial M4 on right; Samsung 840 Pro on left.
Note that READ speeds almost identical, but WRITE speeds considerably faster on the Samsung.
Both 256GB installed as Thunderbolt connected external primary drive. Everything else identical. Groth's TRIM enabled on both drives. Crucial M4 on right; Samsung 840 Pro on left.
Note that READ speeds almost identical, but WRITE speeds considerably faster on the Samsung.
According to the following linked article, TRIM does indeed improve lifespan/longevity of an SSD because it reduces the number of writes.I think most of us would associate the word endurance with lifespan or longevity, but whatever makes you feel better.
http://thessdreview.com/daily-news/...n-and-trim-in-ssds-explained-an-ssd-primer/2/
LaCie SSD vs. Fusion option
It's been about a month now and the LaCie SSD is working out quite nicely. Now that I've experienced it I am very glad I got this external solution. It's not the internal Fusion drive solution but even as a USB 3.0 connection it's giving me at the moment 275 Mb/s write and 428 Mb/s read.
One thing I noticed about the Fusion drive is that it had an automatic backup plan. I think it must have to shadow write everything in the background to the HDD. That's good. One thing it can't do however is be swapped. Not without the enclosure ripped apart, a very costly operation.
This are the specs to my system:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz (3400 MHz)
Memory: 24576 MB
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.8.4 Darwin 12.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 12.4.0: Wed May 1 17:57:12 PDT 2013; root:xnu-2050.24.15~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX OpenGL Engine
OpenGL Version: 2.1 NVIDIA-8.12.47 310.40.00.05f01
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.0
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Ex 4.44.12
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Built with GCC version 40201
This is the current results of Disk Speed Test on my system (if you use Disk Speed Test or any disk speed test software, use it only briefly on your SSD, as in just a minute or two at most as it degrades your SSD just in it's usage. So no benchmarking with it unless you're in the market for a new system).
Again the SSD in use here is the LaCie Thunderbolt 256 GB SSD
If your looking at a new system it's not a mistake to buy the Fusion drive. However, be forewarned that the Fusion drive will eventually wear out and you won't be able to replace it (not cheaply that is). In any event, the EXTERNAL SSD solution via USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt is an excellent solution that's easily upgradable without voiding your warrantee. Also note that if you get an EXTERNAL SSD like the LaCie you need to download and run the TRIM Enabler on your system. Also look at a previous post I made on different customizations like turning your /tmp directory into a real /tmp folder via a ram disk. This cuts down on the unnecessary usage of your SSD considerably.
It's been about a month now and the LaCie SSD is working out quite nicely. Now that I've experienced it I am very glad I got this external solution. It's not the internal Fusion drive solution but even as a USB 3.0 connection it's giving me at the moment 275 Mb/s write and 428 Mb/s read.
One thing I noticed about the Fusion drive is that it had an automatic backup plan. I think it must have to shadow write everything in the background to the HDD. That's good. One thing it can't do however is be swapped. Not without the enclosure ripped apart, a very costly operation.
This are the specs to my system:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz (3400 MHz)
Memory: 24576 MB
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.8.4 Darwin 12.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 12.4.0: Wed May 1 17:57:12 PDT 2013; root:xnu-2050.24.15~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX OpenGL Engine
OpenGL Version: 2.1 NVIDIA-8.12.47 310.40.00.05f01
libcurl Version: libcurl/7.21.1 OpenSSL/0.9.8q zlib/1.2.5 c-ares/1.7.1
J2C Decoder Version: KDU v7.0
Audio Driver Version: FMOD Ex 4.44.12
Qt Webkit Version: 4.7.1 (version number hard-coded)
Built with GCC version 40201
This is the current results of Disk Speed Test on my system (if you use Disk Speed Test or any disk speed test software, use it only briefly on your SSD, as in just a minute or two at most as it degrades your SSD just in it's usage. So no benchmarking with it unless you're in the market for a new system).
Again the SSD in use here is the LaCie Thunderbolt 256 GB SSD
If your looking at a new system it's not a mistake to buy the Fusion drive. However, be forewarned that the Fusion drive will eventually wear out and you won't be able to replace it (not cheaply that is). In any event, the EXTERNAL SSD solution via USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt is an excellent solution that's easily upgradable without voiding your warrantee. Also note that if you get an EXTERNAL SSD like the LaCie you need to download and run the TRIM Enabler on your system. Also look at a previous post I made on different customizations like turning your /tmp directory into a real /tmp folder via a ram disk. This cuts down on the unnecessary usage of your SSD considerably.
TRIM works only on Thunderbolt
Well I woke up this morning to find my SSD acting kind of groggy. So I took a look at it with the benchmark and to my alarm the writes were starting off at like 80 Mb/s. This is below a normal HDD at 110 Mb/s. So I did a search to see what the matter could be and discovered that the SSD needs to be operating off the Thunderbolt in order for the TRIM function to work. After I rebooted with the SSD now connected to the Thunderbolt the following benchmark results were recorded;
So the lesson children is simple. If your going to use an SSD on an iMac as of this date, it needs to be off the Thunderbolt port otherwise your TRIM function won't work. Shame though, cause the USB 3.0 actually had faster read times at 428 Mb/s.
Well I woke up this morning to find my SSD acting kind of groggy. So I took a look at it with the benchmark and to my alarm the writes were starting off at like 80 Mb/s. This is below a normal HDD at 110 Mb/s. So I did a search to see what the matter could be and discovered that the SSD needs to be operating off the Thunderbolt in order for the TRIM function to work. After I rebooted with the SSD now connected to the Thunderbolt the following benchmark results were recorded;
So the lesson children is simple. If your going to use an SSD on an iMac as of this date, it needs to be off the Thunderbolt port otherwise your TRIM function won't work. Shame though, cause the USB 3.0 actually had faster read times at 428 Mb/s.