I'm receiving a Samsung 860 evo tomorrow. I've heard conflicting advice on whether to enable TRIM so I went to Terminal and did a trial run even though I don't have the SSD. Here is the warning from Apple:
IMPORTANT NOTICE: This tool force-enables TRIM for all relevant attached devices, even though such devices may not have been validated for data integrity while using TRIM. Use of this tool to enable TRIM may result in unintended data loss or data corruption. It should not be used in a commercial operating environment or with important data. Before using this tool, you should back up all of your data and regularly back up data while TRIM is enabled. This tool is provided on an “as is” basis. APPLE MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, REGARDING THIS TOOL OR ITS USE ALONE OR IN COMBINATION WITH YOUR DEVICES, SYSTEMS, OR SERVICES. BY USING THIS TOOL TO ENABLE TRIM, YOU AGREE THAT, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, USE OF THE TOOL IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK AND THAT THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO SATISFACTORY QUALITY, PERFORMANCE, ACCURACY AND EFFORT IS WITH YOU.
I just don't want to screw up my data.
2 Answers
Don’t enable TRIM if you feel uncomfortable.
The reality is the speed increase from upgrading to an SSD (from a hard disk drive) on an older system like that alone is much more than enough to improve your system performance.
All that TRIM will do is squeeze out a small percentage more speed while putting your data at potential risk. Is that risk worth the speed? Not in my mind. Remember, lots of people out there tweak their system to “turbo—charge” it but it makes really little difference for the rest of us who want a basic, fast — but stable upgrade.
Just add the SSD to the system and enjoy the speed bump.
1Anecdotally, I've been using Trim on my Samsung EVO 840 since I got it in 2014.
It was my boot drive for 5 years, now used as a secondary with a slightly faster, newer Samsung MZ7LN on a PCIe card as boot drive.
At a rough guess based on uptime & Activity Monitor's disk usage panel, I'm writing about 1TB, reading 500GB, per week. The computer is a 4,1 Mac Pro, firmware upgraded to a 5,1 with dual 6-core Westmeres.
It never sleeps, so that drive has been running about 6 years with no signs of quitting.
Partly because of that warning from Apple, I never used their method. Instead I originally used Trim Enabler, then Disk Sensei, both from Cindori. I don't have their newest Sensei version, as I'm still on Mojave. The Cindori Trim apps were specifically made 'for those of us without Apple-supported SSDs' in the early years.
I used to have to run a manual full trim about once a year to keep the speed up, but perhaps coinciding with my shift to APFS a few years ago that doesn't seem to have been necessary in recent years.
UnTrimmed SSDs would display this slowdown much much earlier, as once every cell was used once they would then have to do an erase before write, for every write. Trim does this in the background, so a write is just a write, it doesn't need to erase first. Erase is sloooow compared to anything else on an SSD.
Of course, you should never run any computer without at least one solid backup; preferably two. Disasters happen - that's life.
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