Solid State Drives (SSD)

[theadam]

I know that it's possible and even know how to enable the Crucial M4 (256 GB) to have TRIM support in Lion, but has anybody tried this.  I'm using the M4 as my system drive without the TRIM and it seems fast, however this is also just a few days old.  Thanks for any feedback.

[PintoOSX]

Did anyone happen to figure this out, my M4 is coming this week and have Lion and was going to download "TRIM Support" from the web to enable this.

Anyone know who these 3 work together? OSX lion, crucial 128gb SSD, TRim Support.

Thanks

[targetbsp]

It doesn't especially matter.  The drives Garbage Collection makes Trim fairly optional.  My Mac owning friend hasn't bothered enabling it on his.

[SidM]

For anyone who would like to enable TRIM on Mac OSX Lion 10.7, here is a great article that shows you how, without using the TRIM enabler (which is definitely NOT advised):

http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/trim-enabler-for-lion/

[yv]

It's not necessary to enable TRIM support under OS X Lion.

Apparently, having OS X's TRIM Support and the m4 Garbage Collection enabled makes the drive slower. So no need for TRIM Support.

http://lifehacker.com/5803331/how-to-enable-trim-on-your-macs-solid+state-drive

This article later on states that cleaning the drive (zeroing) through OS X Disk Utility once in a while (I'll do it 1 or 2 times a year) helps with performance if TRIM is not enabled. But I think the m4 Garbage Collection is reliable. Only time will tell.

[yv]

I've installed the Crucial m4. It had the firmware 000F on it already. Didn't enabled the TRIM support. OWC provides a more detailed answer as why to not enable TRIM support in OS X if your SSD has its own Garbage Collection, like the m4.

http://blog.macsales.com/11051-to-trim-or-not-to-trim-owc-has-the-answer

Speeds are blazingly fast, haven't feel any lag yet. Running OS X Lion 10.7.4 with a 3Gb/s SATA interface, so I can't access the full 6 Gb/s the m4 is capable of. Still, the difference is crazy.

Benchmarks for WD Scorpio Black 7200 rpm mechanical drive

Benchmarks for Crucial m4 SSD

[fajran]

Hi.. I'm also using Crucial M4 on Lion and haven't enable the TRIM. While I can get comparable read speed, I only got ~178MBps write which is much less than your 239MBps write. Any idea why?

I am using mid 2010 mbp which only has SATA II 3 Gbps. here's the details from system info

NVidia MCP89 AHCI:

Vendor:NVidia

Product:MCP89 AHCI

Link Speed:3 Gigabit

Negotiated Link Speed:3 Gigabit

Description:AHCI Version 1.30 Supported

M4-CT128M4SSD2:

Capacity:128.04 GB (128,035,676,160 bytes)

Model:M4-CT128M4SSD2                          

Revision:000F    

[targetbsp]

The specified write speed for the 128gb M4 is 175mb.  He must have the 256gb (or larger) which has faster writes.

[Timur]

All that TRIM does is to tell the drive which sectors are free, nothing more! It's up to the drive's own garbage collection to make use of that information. A good GC implementation will just mark that information in its logs and make use of it next time wear leveling needs to shift around blocks. There is no need to start deleting blocks right away after a TRIM command (or rather TRIM information).

On Snow Leopard I saw no drawbacks from using TRIM, didn't try Lion yet.

[targetbsp]

It does appear to do it more or less right away though.  If you take a drive benchmarking below spec, allocate a file across the drive* and delete it the drive light will come on seconds later for several seconds and a benchmark immediately after is back up to spec.

*instantly fills the drive with a file but with no actual significant write takes place.  This is how force trim utilities work.