SSD used in 2012 Mac mini

[MatthewAMEL]

Crucial Tech Support is wrong. Garbage Collection is implemented in HW. The OS knows nothing about GC. Crucial telling you GC is 'enabled' when the drive is installed in OS X just illustrates the Tech's lack of understanding.

It's like the OWC post about 'To TRIM or not to TRIM'. It's just plain wrong.

Garbage Collection does not replace TRIM. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or uninformed.

http://thessdreview.com/daily-news/...ion-and-trim-in-ssds-explained-an-ssd-primer/

 

[Penn Jennings]

Crucial Tech Support is wrong. Garbage Collection is implemented in HW. The OS knows nothing about GC. Crucial telling you GC is 'enabled' when the drive is installed in OS X just illustrates the Tech's lack of understanding.

It's like the OWC post about 'To TRIM or not to TRIM'. It's just plain wrong.

Garbage Collection does not replace TRIM. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying or uninformed.

http://thessdreview.com/daily-news/...ion-and-trim-in-ssds-explained-an-ssd-primer/

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4712/the-crucial-m4-ssd-update-faster-with-fw0009/6

The statement below is from Anandtech's actual tests results on the m4:
"Even then, it's obvious that sequential write passes over used LBAs cleans the drive up fairly well. Chances are that a standard desktop workload in a TRIM-free OS would be fine over the long run."

It may be that you are right and that Crucial Technical support AND Anandtech are wrong about the Crucial M4. Anandtech is a third party and I think is fairly well respected with actually test data. You are using Wiki and a generic article to show that TRIM is a "MUST". I think that you'd have to admit though the odds of you being right are pretty damn slim. I'm not saying you're wrong... But Crucial Technical support and Anandtech are.


EDIT:
TRIM might be optimal on the m4. It certainly is no where near "a MUST". I've been running a 512 GB m4 for a while now under OS X 10.8.2 without TRIM and I still get 259 MB writes at 85% full.... Just like I did out of the box.

 

[MatthewAMEL]

Did you actually read the article you linked to?

"The bigger concern is running the m4 in an OS without official TRIM support (e.g. Mac OS X) where you could find yourself in a particularly bad situation over a long period of time."

It also states the TRIM command returned the m4 to 'like new' performance.

 

[Penn Jennings]

Did you actually read the article you linked to?

"The bigger concern is running the m4 in an OS without official TRIM support (e.g. Mac OS X) where you could find yourself in a particularly bad situation over a long period of time."

It also states the TRIM command returned the m4 to 'like new' performance.

Yes, if you continuously write to the drive your performance will drop off over time unless you idle. In a real life setting, who writes continuously without ever going idle?

Going back to what Crucial stated: GC runs when the drive is idle. TRIM runs when needed.

So if you write continuously, yeah GC will not keep up. Again, how often do people continuously write to their SSD in real life? That was Anandtech's point in the summary:

The bigger concern is running the m4 in an OS without official TRIM support (e.g. Mac OS X) where you could find yourself in a particularly bad situation over a long period of time. Even then, it's obvious that sequential write passes over used LBAs cleans the drive up fairly well. Chances are that a standard desktop workload in a TRIM-free OS would be fine over the long run. If not, some sequential writes to any free space would do the trick (e.g. copying a large video file then deleting it).​

TRIM used to be a must with all SSDs. It's not a must any more. There are cases where it will help but it's not a problem for most people if they don't... depending on the SSD that they have, OS and workload.

 

[MatthewAMEL]

I agree. 'Required' is a strong word. Perhaps 'best practice' would be a better way to put it.

 

[Carl Spackler]

EDIT -- nevermind...a little Googling suggest this is not an option for SSDs in Lion.

Could you not "Erase Free Space" periodically and be just fine?

Yes, if you continuously write to the drive your performance will drop off over time unless you idle. In a real life setting, who writes continuously without ever going idle?

Going back to what Crucial stated: GC runs when the drive is idle. TRIM runs when needed.

So if you write continuously, yeah GC will not keep up. Again, how often do people continuously write to their SSD in real life? That was Anandtech's point in the summary:

The bigger concern is running the m4 in an OS without official TRIM support (e.g. Mac OS X) where you could find yourself in a particularly bad situation over a long period of time. Even then, it's obvious that sequential write passes over used LBAs cleans the drive up fairly well. Chances are that a standard desktop workload in a TRIM-free OS would be fine over the long run. If not, some sequential writes to any free space would do the trick (e.g. copying a large video file then deleting it).
​

TRIM used to be a must with all SSDs. It's not a must any more. There are cases where it will help but it's not a problem for most people if they don't... depending on the SSD that they have, OS and workload.

 

[MatthewAMEL]

The 'erase free space' in Disk Utility and other OS X disk programs and the ATA 'secure erase' command are different.

'Erase free space' writes zeros to every sector of an HDD. This is a 'bad thing' with regards to SSD's.

There are no native 'secure erase' utilities for OS X. You can make a gparted cd and execute the secure erase that way.