How does trim work on ssd

This is exactly the thing that SSD garbage collection is designed to prevent. With proper maintenance, the speed of an SSD can be preserved.

Every file system has its own way of doing things, but generally speaking, when you delete a file, that file is not really gone. The OS does not typically erase the storage blocks that were previously inhabited by the file. Instead, the OS simply marks the blocks as being available and stores that information in a directory file.

The file still exists in those blocks on the disk, but the directory file lists them as empty so they are invisible to your computer.

The OS would simply mark the blocks as being available, and the hard disk could write new data over the top of the old data. For SSDs, storage blocks have to be erased before they can be overwritten. It is this requirement for erasing previously used blocks that causes SSDs to become slower over time.

To prevent this undesirable situation from happening, modern SSDs run complex routines called garbage collection in order to always keep as large a reserve as possible of pristine empty blocks ready for writing. Garbage collection looks for blocks that contain a mix of good and stale pages and then duplicates all the good pages into new blocks and leaves behind only stale pages in the old block. You can run it manually or check that Trim is enabled by looking at the Properties of the drive, then selecting Tools , and Optimize.

To check to see if you have Trim support, select the Apple menu while holding down the Option key. Under System Information , scroll to the name of your storage interface under Hardware. Garbage collection occurs automatically using proprietary Active Garbage Collection functionality created by the manufacturer of the solid state drive. Because garbage collection is so important to the functioning of the drive, all drives have it.

Micron makes all of its solid state drives from the silicon up, and garbage collection is a vital part of the drive. Learn more about the process to manufacture SSDs. But if your operating system doesn't support Trim, it's not a disaster. All rights reserved. Neither Crucial nor Micron Technology, Inc. Micron, the Micron logo, Crucial, and the Crucial logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Micron Technology, Inc.

Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.

Trim will run automatically whenever the OS decides it's necessary. Obviously, Trim is supported by the latest versions of MacOS, too. I think it was first implemented in Snow Leopard, but I'd have to check that.

That's great to hear Jon. Honestly I have trouble determining the actual space of an SSD with trim. It's not that I don't like trim, but they just never tell me what the actual used space is.

I wouldn't worry about that too much, John. With Trim, the actual physical fill state of the drive will much more closely match the state of the file system. However, there is always going to be some lag, because when the OS sends trim data invalidated LBAs to the drive, the drive has the option of cleaning up that space at its leisure per the spec.

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Learn More ». This is necessary because, if many TRIM requests are sent to a drive at once, the requests may build up in a queue and then be discarded. To check that Windows is performing retrim optimizations on a schedule, open the Optimize Drives application.

By default, Windows will run the retrim optimization on a weekly schedule. These options should just be enabled by default. Browse All iPhone Articles Browse All Mac Articles Do I need one?

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