The TRIM command

I just wrote this post on my own forum after I found out TRIM wasn't on in any of my computers. You may find this useful if you use Windows 7 and a SSD.

Direct copy/paste:

"I just found out that despite me using an SSD in Windows 7 the TRIM command was not on. I stupidly thought the TRIM command was activated upon using a SSD. I discovered that three of my computers that run Windows 7 had the TRIM command off. This is not good at all due to the fact the TRIM command handles so-called garbage collection and frees up the deleted space in the SSD. After all this time two of my computers had over 2 TB of data written to them! This undoubtedly will lessen the life of your SSD if the TRIM command isn't enabled.

Here are the prerequisites to use the TRIM command:

Windows 7 or Windows 8 / Windows 8.1.

SSD with TRIM enabled firmware. You can use SSD-Z to check this. Link below.

BIOS/UEFI storage controller set to AHCI/SATA mode. Before you ever install an OS to your SSD you should first go into your BIOS and turn on AHCI.

Now to check whether TRIM is on or not, go to the Start orb and in search enter CMD. Right click command and run as administrator.

Enter: fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

If it says 1 then TRIM is off. If it says 0 then TRIM is on.

To turn TRIM on make sure command is in Admin mode again and enter: fsutil behavior set disabledeletenotify 0

If for some reason you want to disable TRIM then enter: fsutil behavior set disabledeletenotify 1

A couple of nice little utilities to keep on hand for SSD checking are SSD-Z http://aezay.dk/aezay/ssdz/ and CrystalDiskInfo https://crystalmark.info/en/download/

If you would like to read more about what the TRIM command is, read the Wikipedia entry here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_%28computing%29 "

After all this time two of my computers had over 2 TB of data written to them!

All modern SSDs can handle over 1,000 TB of writes before they start reaching the limits of their flash. You will likely wear out long before your SSD.

This undoubtedly will lessen the life of your SSD if the TRIM command isn't enabled.

Uh, no.

The advantage of the TRIM command is that you can tell the drive that the space is unused and it does not need to be erased before a write, speeding up writes. It won't make any appreciable difference to its lifetime - it will likely become obsolete before it fails.

Cheers!

Luke

All modern SSDs can handle over 1,000 TB of writes before they start reaching the limits of their flash. You will likely wear out long before your SSD.

Scheduled backups at my office would exceed 1000 TB of writes in about 3 years' time, at the rate our user file data is growing. No, not a flightsim hobbyist scenario, and, no, I'm not using SSDs for backup storage. But maybe, these days, 1000 TB of writes is really not fantastically large. Things have changed. Today, at work, I started configuring a second 32 TB drive array. The amount of data we use at work AND at home keeps growing exponentially.

My hobby-related files, software and content for all the various flight and train sims that I use or have used, probably surpasses 1 TB now.

That said, running an SSD without TRIM is tin-foil hat territory, even though TRIM is not really related to drive time-of-failure.

From Digital Citizen:

" … whenever a delete command is issued by the user or the operating system, the TRIM command immediately wipes the pages or blocks where the files are stored. This means that the next time the operating system tries to write new data in that area, it does not have to wait first to delete it."

Firs of all, it's not tin foil hat BS. The TRIM command should be used whenever you use a SSD.

Second, I have had many SSDs fail and I bet it was because I thought the TRIM command was on.

Don't pass on erroneous information.

Firs of all, it's not tin foil hat BS. The TRIM command should be used whenever you use a SSD.

 

Second, I have had many SSDs fail and I bet it was because I thought the TRIM command was on.

 

 

Don't pass on erroneous information.

Yes, TRIM should be enabled where possible. However, the odds those drives failed because the TRIM command wasn't on are basically zero. Speculating about something you aren't familiar with is passing on erroneous information.

For those who want to understand what TRIM does and how it works, see the article below for a good intro.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/ask-ars-my-ssd-does-garbage-collection-so-i-dont-need-trim-right/

Yes, TRIM should be enabled where possible. However, the odds those drives failed because the TRIM command wasn't on are basically zero. Speculating about something you aren't familiar with is passing on erroneous information.

I had over 25TB of data written to these drives, possibly more, and without TRIM I more than likely had write amplification thus lowering the SSD's life expectancy. This was years and years ago when SSDs first hit the market and to make matters worse it was a Sandforce chipset.

These days you probably could go without TRIM, but why would you? That's like not over provisioning when you can and should.

Each there own I always say...

"I wish I could be like the cool kids."

I had over 25TB of data written to these drives, possibly more, and without TRIM I more than likely had write amplification thus lowering the SSD's life expectancy.

Even if you had 4x write amplification you'd still have just over 100TB of usage. If you assume a 5k cycle limit for flash (really 10k, but let's be pessimistic) you'd still have plenty of life. Unless you were monitoring the drive's SMART attributes (specifically the reallocated sector count) and it was going up, your problem was NOT that your NAND wore out. Remember that even early drives did garbage collection.

This was years and years ago when SSDs first hit the market and to make matters worse it was a Sandforce chipset.

That's your problem there, not a lack of TRIM. Those were crap. I had an OCZ Vertex 2 that I joked could be used as /dev/null, except that from time to time it retained data.

These days you probably could go without TRIM, but why would you? That's like not over provisioning when you can and should.

No one's saying that at all. If you have TRIM support in your OS and filesystem, it makes no sense to have it off. But to say that it "undoubtedly" will reduce your SSD's life simply isn't true. There are more people win a seven figure lottery jackpot in America, than there are consumers who wear out the flash in their SSDs.

Cheers!

Luke

No one's saying that at all. If you have TRIM support in your OS and filesystem, it makes no sense to have it off. But to say that it "undoubtedly" will reduce your SSD's life simply isn't true

WTF. I din't say the TRIM command would cause a drive to fail, I'm implying that the TRIM command will help keep the drive kosher.

This undoubtedly will lessen the life of your SSD if the TRIM command isn't enabled.

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