MP 1,1-5,1 Over Provisioning (OP) for Read-Only SSD: does it really matter?

[bosDAW]

The command 'fsck -fy' will trim all of the unused space in filesystems. It won't trim the OP space.

On Windows, Magician creates a bootable thumb drive to actually do the secure erase procedure - if you're dual booting you could try booting that thumb drive. Or connect the drive to a Windows system and create the thumb drive.

I am not dual booting; I have an external drive to boot from on mac to do 'fsck -fy' if that is the only option, but I also have access (potentially) to a PC laptop. So I thought the easiest thing to do is to remove any Samsung drives from the MP; connect to the PC one at a time; use Magician to do a secure erase; put drives back in to the MP, format. But from what I understand, I would not be able to do this with a non-Samsung drive (i.e. the Apple-installed Toshiba drive). So fsck is probably the only available option (for me, anyway).

 

[bosDAW]

Also, maybe a silly question, but does cloning a disk also "copy" the free space so as to recreate any garbage waiting to be collected/trimmed? Or can a drive be cloned onto a new/safe-erased drive no problem?

 

[Ludacrisvp]

Also, maybe a silly question, but does cloning a disk also "copy" the free space so as to recreate any garbage waiting to be collected/trimmed? Or can a drive be cloned onto a new/safe-erased drive no problem?

Depends on how you are cloning it.

 

[2984839]

I wouldn't worry about it; it's over-provisioned from the factory anyway. I have SSDs from about 6 years ago that I did not over-provision, nor have they ever seen a TRIM command and they are all still fine, even with daily use that whole time.

 

[bosDAW]

The command 'fsck -fy' will trim all of the unused space in filesystems. It won't trim the OP space.

Running First Aid, I actually do not see the "trimming free blocks" operation that I read about online, so not sure if this is still working in the background. Is there any SSD software available for mac? I also read that Apple does not allow third-party developers to check the SMART status of an SSD, so there is no software since c.2016. This seems silly since Apple does not offer anything other than Disk Utility, which is limited to begin with. ?

Depends on how you are cloning it.

Disk Utility in High Sierra 10.13.6

 

[tsialex]

Is there any SSD software available for mac? I also read that Apple does not allow third-party developers to check the SMART status of an SSD, so there is no software since c.2016. This seems silly since Apple does not offer anything other than Disk Utility, which is limited to begin with. ?

Wrong info, SMART is supported without any problems. You can install smartmon-tools or DriveDx, just to suggest two.

 

[bosDAW]

Depends on how you are cloning it.

Would anybody be able to elaborate on this?

 

[Ludacrisvp]

Would anybody be able to elaborate on this?

Something like “dd” that’s doing a block level copy vs a file based copy tool like rsync.

 

[bosDAW]

I am not familiar with either of those and have just been using Apple's Disk Utility, but I thought that most/all cloning software does block-level copy, no?