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TRIM Support Enabler

davidlv said:
Online dictionaries can be useful:eek::
vit·ri·ol (v t r - l , - l). n. 1. a. See sulfuric acid. b. Any of various sulfates of metals, such as ferrous sulfate, zinc sulfate, or copper sulfate. 2. Bitterly abusive feeling or expression. tr.v.
I think he means "2." in this case.
Click to expand...

thanks!
 
Has anyone figured out how to "Erase Free Space" with Lion yet? I wish I would have ran TRIM Enabler before I upgraded to Lion, for this reason alone.

"Erase Free Space" is also disabled if you try to use it via Disk Utility when you to try use the Recovery method (CMD+R at startup).
 
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kerplunknet said:
Has anyone figured out how to "Erase Free Space" with Lion yet? I wish I would have ran TRIM Enabler before I upgraded to Lion, for this reason alone.

"Erase Free Space" is also disabled if you try to use it via Disk Utility when you to try use the Recovery method (CMD+R at startup).
Click to expand...

CMD+R at startup won't work, you need to boot off another drive, either your Snow Leopard DVD, a Lion boot image you can create on USB, or another boot drive you have, such as a Super Duper backup.

you need to be able to unmount the drive to do this, and you can't unmount a drive you booted from;)
 
So I read somewhere on this thread that if you have an SSD with built in garbage collection, like the OWC SSDs, then that garbage collection is "sufficient" and this TRIM enabler isn't really necessary. And I don't really want something to just be sufficient enough, I want the best performance I can get out of my SSD.

My question is this: for my OWC SSD which supports TRIM, would there still be any improvements if I installed the TRIM enabler? Or would the combination of the built in garbage collection and TRIM enabler actually end up causing problems?
 
strausd said:
So I read somewhere on this thread that if you have an SSD with built in garbage collection, like the OWC SSDs, then that garbage collection is "sufficient" and this TRIM enabler isn't really necessary. And I don't really want something to just be sufficient enough, I want the best performance I can get out of my SSD.

My question is this: for my OWC SSD which supports TRIM, would there still be any improvements if I installed the TRIM enabler? Or would the combination of the built in garbage collection and TRIM enabler actually end up causing problems?
Click to expand...

The answer is somewhere in this thread, but it's slowly becoming too long to find anything:

Garbage Collection needs to know what is garbage. The two main ways for the drive to know what is garbage are:

1) When a sector is overwritten with new data;

2) When a sector is explicitly TRIMmed.

Without TRIM support, only 1 is in effect, thereby limiting the possibilities of the garbage collection. So in theory, TRIM would always be a win, however in practice, with some drives, there are sometimes strange performance effects when using TRIM on a drive with GC under Mac OS X.
 
mattonthemoon said:
CMD+R at startup won't work, you need to boot off another drive, either your Snow Leopard DVD, a Lion boot image you can create on USB, or another boot drive you have, such as a Super Duper backup.

you need to be able to unmount the drive to do this, and you can't unmount a drive you booted from;)
Click to expand...

Even if this works, it won't have the desired effect of TRIM'ing the free space on the SSD. Prior to Lion one could install the hack and erase free space to TRIM the drive and get it back like new. If you boot from another source, that source won't have the TRIM hack (kext) installed and even if it allows one to erase free space it won't TRIM the drive.

I suppose you could try to install the hack on a bootable, external drive then boot from the external and try to erase free space on the internal drive while booted into the TRIM hacked external drive? Seems like that would work.
 
If the SSD is brand new and you've clean installed lion, is the erase free space stage necessary?

Just asking as I have an intel 320 160gb coming on monday, and I've made a bootable usb stick of lion to clean install.

Sorry if the answer has already been posted, I've tried reading back through as many pages as possible but I've just confused myself more.
 
mattonthemoon said:
CMD+R at startup won't work, you need to boot off another drive, either your Snow Leopard DVD, a Lion boot image you can create on USB, or another boot drive you have, such as a Super Duper backup.

you need to be able to unmount the drive to do this, and you can't unmount a drive you booted from;)
Click to expand...
Ah, genius. Thanks, I'm going to give that a try. Thanks!

EDIT: This did not work.

Snow Leopard DVD: Didn't load at all.

Burned Lion DVD: Got to Disk Utility, but the "Erase Free Space" was still grayed out. Even after I unmounted it.
 
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mattonthemoon said:
huh, this is what worked for me.
Click to expand...
What, specifically, did you boot the recovery stuff from? USB drive?

Edit: Nevermind. I guess it doesn't matter, as Weaselboy stated.

I wish there was a consensus on the proper way to install/use TRIM.

Some people say that it should be enabled on SSDs with garbage collection (most recent SSDs), and some don't. Annoying.
 
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Is there any way to "Erase Free Space" now, or is that stupid $40 DiskTester app the only way to do it? (Or maybe that doesn't even work with Lion.)
 
kerplunknet said:
Is there any way to "Erase Free Space" now, or is that stupid $40 DiskTester app the only way to do it? (Or maybe that doesn't even work with Lion.)
Click to expand...

A zero dollar solution: reboot, press cmd+s during startup.
You will boot into single usermode (text only)
Now enter fsck -ffy and press enter.

All free blocks will be trimmed.
 
kerplunknet said:
What, specifically, did you boot the recovery stuff from? USB drive?

Edit: Nevermind. I guess it doesn't matter, as Weaselboy stated.

I wish there was a consensus on the proper way to install/use TRIM.

Some people say that it should be enabled on SSDs with garbage collection (most recent SSDs), and some don't. Annoying.
Click to expand...

I agree with Weasleboy, but i used my 10.6 DVD to boot from, and opened disk util from there.
 
Ger Teunis said:
A zero dollar solution: reboot, press cmd+s during startup.
You will boot into single usermode (text only)
Now enter fsck -ffy and press enter.

All free blocks will be trimmed.
Click to expand...

I had not previously tried this in LION since I read somewhere fsck in LION did not do TRIM, but I just tried it in LION with a 2011 MBP and Samsung 470 SSD and I do get the "Trimming unused blocks" output at the end of the fsck -ffy run. So this looks like the way to go.
 
Weaselboy said:
I had not previously tried this in LION since I read somewhere fsck in LION did not do TRIM, but I just tried it in LION with a 2011 MBP and Samsung 470 SSD and I do get the "Trimming unused blocks" output at the end of the fsck -ffy run. So this looks like the way to go.
Click to expand...

Works on all trim enabled Lion builds and trim enabled Snow Leopard 10.6.8 and up.

Trim must be enabled by 0xED or via TrimEnabler app.
 
Ger Teunis said:
A zero dollar solution: reboot, press cmd+s during startup.
You will boot into single usermode (text only)
Now enter fsck -ffy and press enter.

All free blocks will be trimmed.
Click to expand...

Amazing! Thank you! This should be sticky'd somewhere.

So the steps for someone who wants to enable TRIM support for a TRIM-enabled SSD that isn't using the SandForce controller or some very intense garbage collection, is to:

1. Install TRIM Enabler.
2. Boot into single user mode (cmd+s at startup)
3. Run: fsck -ffy

Very nice.

Edit: I noticed that each time I run the "fsck -ffy" command, it seems to process it quicker. Maybe you want to run that command a few times while you're in single user mode... I mean, since you're there and all. :p
 
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kerplunknet said:
Amazing! Thank you! This should be sticky'd somewhere.

So the steps for someone who wants to enable TRIM support for a TRIM-enabled SSD that isn't using the SandForce controller or some very intense garbage collection, is to:

1. Install TRIM Enabler.
2. Boot into single user mode (cmd+s at startup)
3. Run: fsck -ffy

Very nice.
Click to expand...

And optional: step 4: disable Trim if you do not like it trimming all the time.
 
I look at TRIM as I look at haircuts.

Sure, you could let your hair continuously grow and not worry about it, or you could occasionally do some hair maintenance and get it cut. It may be a small inconvenience, but worth it? I think so :)

In summary, just remember that not using TRIM support leaves you as a hairy bastard. ;)
 
daneoni said:
Just wanted to chime in. Got my Crucial M4 today, updated the firmware before even formatting the drive. Installed SL, migrated my stuff over and ran the patch.

It's running peachy thus far.
Click to expand...

How's it been running so far, I have two M4's I need to update (one OS X, one WIN7). Is the beach ball problem gone now? Although I only ever had this problem in VLC to begin with.
 
Hey guys, I used the Snow Leopard DVD to do the Erase Free Space since Lion doesn't allow me to click on it (neither from the OS neither from a burned DVD with the Lion setup). This is not a problem, right?... I suppose that it does the job exactly as if I could run that from Lion.

BTW, I'll try the "fsck -ffy" thingie.
 
Quick question guys.

Currently, I installed Lion over a SL installation. Now that the important papers and projects are done in summer school, I'd like to do a clean install of Lion.

I normally format the whole drive, and as far as I know, the only way of doing this to an SSD in a MacBook is by loading up Gparted live disk and doing a secure erase. BUT, if I do a clean install of Lion and install trim enabler, is a secure erase still needed prior to the Lion install?
 
can you even install lion clean? thought it was only available as an upgrade from 10.6.8
 
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