I thought that TRIM has to be supported by both hardware and support, and not just by one or the other?![]()
both hardware and software must support trim
So does that mean our SSD in the MBA support TRIM? If I understand correctly, OSX Lion supports TRIM from the "software" level but if the default SSD's in the MBA on the "hardware" level, then there is no TRIM functionality?
I guess what I'm really asking is that when OSX Lion comes to the table in summer, will our new MBA's have TRIM support via hardward and software?
So does that mean our SSD in the MBA support TRIM? If I understand correctly, OSX Lion supports TRIM from the "software" level but if the default SSD's in the MBA on the "hardware" level, then there is no TRIM functionality?
I guess what I'm really asking is that when OSX Lion comes to the table in summer, will our new MBA's have TRIM support via hardward and software?
Yes, the drives in the current MacBook Air support TRIM. You can tell that since TRIM is active in a Windows 7 Boot Camp partition on them.
Windows thinking! Trim is for Windows machines with SSD's. And just like you need to degrag their sorry hard drives you need to trim their SSD's. Macs are different. The Mac OS doesn't mess up the drives like Windows, that craps all over everything.
Actually, any amount of writing and deleting will cause an SSD's performance to degrade. The Toshiba and Samsung drives that Apple uses do a lot of OS-independent "garbage collection" that helps, but TRIM support will still come in handy.
Wait for OS10.6.7, which is coming soon...![]()
...a lot of results have shown that newer SSDs with garbage collection (beginning with the SF controllers) do a much better job of retaining performance over time than the first wave of SSDs. TRIM might still be helpful in the long run but it's not a big of a problem as it was so I wouldn't worry too much about it, especially since TRIM is coming soon to OS X anyways.
Windows thinking! Trim is for Windows machines with SSD's. And just like you need to degrag their sorry hard drives you need to trim their SSD's. Macs are different. The Mac OS doesn't mess up the drives like Windows, that craps all over everything.
stockscalper is right that when Macworld tested the new SSD's in the Air performance did not substantially degrade after torture tests and re-installing the OS.
This was an interesting result and there are a several explanations for why this might be true.
However, one explanation that is definitely wrong is that somehow OS X doesn't "mess up" SSD's like Windows does.
Performance degradation of SSD's on Mac's have already been proven a variety of SSD's in the past. Newer SSD's are much better at garbage collection which partially explains the Macworld results.
If it were true that OS X doesn't "mess up" SSDs like Windows does, then we would expect to see that all SSDs (not just the newer ones found in the Air), including those without garbage collection, do not experience performance loss over time. But this is not the case.
In any case, a lot of results have shown that newer SSDs with garbage collection (beginning with the SF controllers) do a much better job of retaining performance over time than the first wave of SSDs. TRIM might still be helpful in the long run but it's not a big of a problem as it was so I wouldn't worry too much about it, especially since TRIM is coming soon to OS X anyways.
Sure, and that's why they're adding trim to Lion?