SSD and TRIM command possible with bootcamp/VMWare?

[kman79]

Hello, I’m not quite sure if this has been mentioned before, but I was wondering if the TRIM command would be functional if I was to run Windows 7 via VMware or bootcamp?

I know Snow Leopard does not support TRIM and Windows 7 does, so I was hoping as a workaround to this issue, I would run windows 7 on vmware and maybe reap the benefits of TRIM support in Windows 7? I do on occasion use Windows 7 via VMware, so I'm not only considering installing it for just the TRIM command function.

Is my logic flawed? Excuse my ignorance to the matter but any help with this is greatly appreciated

 

[BobK]

Hello, I’m not quite sure if this has been mentioned before, but I was wondering if the TRIM command would be functional if I was to run Windows 7 via VMware or bootcamp?

I know Snow Leopard does not support TRIM and Windows 7 does, so I was hoping as a workaround to this issue, I would run windows 7 on vmware and maybe reap the benefits of TRIM support in Windows 7? I do on occasion use Windows 7 via VMware, so I'm not only considering installing it for just the TRIM command function.

Is my logic flawed? Excuse my ignorance to the matter but any help with this is greatly appreciated

I am out of line to answer, since I do not have Windows on my MBP, but I do have an Intel SSD. Do you partition your drive to install Windows? If so, I would think that Windows trim feature would only work on it's partition.

 

[tenderidol]

Hello, I’m not quite sure if this has been mentioned before, but I was wondering if the TRIM command would be functional if I was to run Windows 7 via VMware or bootcamp?

I know Snow Leopard does not support TRIM and Windows 7 does, so I was hoping as a workaround to this issue, I would run windows 7 on vmware and maybe reap the benefits of TRIM support in Windows 7? I do on occasion use Windows 7 via VMware, so I'm not only considering installing it for just the TRIM command function.

Is my logic flawed? Excuse my ignorance to the matter but any help with this is greatly appreciated

It will NOT run through VMware. It "may" run via bootcamp, but it will only work for your Windows partition.

 

[Battlefield Fan]

I am out of line to answer, since I do not have Windows on my MBP, but I do have an Intel SSD. Do you partition your drive to install Windows? If so, I would think that Windows trim feature would only work on it's partition.

Yeah I have a OCZ vertex installed in my MacBook pro. I've got snow leapord along with windows 7 through boot camp. To my knowledge TRIM only works on the windows 7 partition.

 

[kman79]

I appreciate the replies.

Thanks for pointing that out that it would only affect the Windows 7 partition, that was a pretty obvious answer that I didn't even consider.

I'm in no way familiar with scripts or programing, but is it possible to manually run the TRIM command via terminal in OS X?

 

[briancl]

It is not possible to run TRIM through VMWare or Parallels. TRIM is an ATA command that must be issued by the host OS to the physical drive, and client OS's inside of VMWare do not have this type of access.

However, a TRIM style command would be a really great thing to have for virtualized systems because then you could dynamically shrink the virtual disk. We all know that it is possible to dynamically grow a disk in VMWare as you fill it up, but it is not currently possible to shrink it back down as you delete files. The VMWare client OS could issue the TRIM command to the virtual disk, so this functionality would be independent of the physical disk in use... SSD or spinning HDD.

This would be a great benefit for enterprise applications that rely heavily on virtualization, but there would also be some benefit to regular users, too.

 

[coast1ja]

What if you backed up the SSD to a Time Machine disk, took it out, reformatted it into NTFS, ran TRIM, then Reformatted back to GPT, and then reinstalled and restored from Time Machine... would that in essence clean the disk?... or would it still think there were used sectors.

 

[iTry1984]

What if you backed up the SSD to a Time Machine disk, took it out, reformatted it into NTFS, ran TRIM, then Reformatted back to GPT, and then reinstalled and restored from Time Machine... would that in essence clean the disk?... or would it still think there were used sectors.

I think if you do a quick format after TRIM the disk will be clean. But there has to be an easier way to do that!?

 

[emt1]

The Vertex has garbage collection anyways, so TRIM really isn't that big of a deal.