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UPDATE 6/30/2015. As reported by Ars Technica and confirmed by Apple, today’s OS X 10.10.4 update “has added a command line utility that can be used to enable TRIM on third-party SSDs without having to download and install anything. Called trimforce, the utility can be executed from the OS X terminal, and it requires a reboot to start working.”
“TRIM helps SSDs out by telling SSDs which pages can be marked as stale when an operating system deletes files (something the SSD ordinarily would have no way of knowing). It’s by no means a requirement, but it’s helpful and could potentially help the performance of an SSD as it ages.
“The scary warnings about trimforce are likely in place because not every disk implements TRIM in the same way, and older SSDs might behave oddly or in ways that OS X doesn’t expect when told to TRIM pages. If you have a relatively recent SSD, though, there shouldn’t be any problem enabling TRIM via trimforce—especially considering that same SSD in Windows or most current Linux distributions would already be using TRIM.”
BIG NOTE
If you own a 3rd-party SSD (Solid State Drive) unit and are running a version of OS X 10.10.3 or earlier (Yosemite) – you NEED to read this.
If you own an Apple SSD or Fusion drive, this article does NOT apply to you.
THE PROBLEM
Last week, on the Digital Production Buzz, OWC CEO Larry O’Connor discussed a critical problem where computers containing a 3rd-party SSD drive are unable to work properly under Yosemite. And, in some cases, the system won’t boot at all; resulting in a gray startup screen.
The issue revolves around Trim utility software used by the SSD drive.
NOTE: Listen to his complete interview here.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT
In order for an SSD system to work properly, the operating system needs to “clean” the unused contents of an SSD drive whenever you add or delete media. Further, the OS needs to know what parts of the SSD are available to store new data.
This process is handled by Trim software. The difficulty is that Apple only supports Trim on its own SSD drives. If you use a 3rd-party drive, you have to use 3rd-party software to get the performance you need from the SSD.
THE DETAILS
“…Support for Trim is based on the operating system and the SSD manufacturer. Microsoft Windows began to natively support the Trim command for SSDs in Windows 7. Apple added Trim support in 10.6.8, however Apple does not natively support Trim on non-Apple SSDs.
“Trim is an operating system-based command for SSDs that is activated when you delete a file on the SSD. When you delete a file from your computer, Trim notifies the SSD that the location of the deleted file no longer contains valid data. Trim then works in conjunction with the SSD’s garbage collection process to move both valid and invalid data from the old block to the new block. Having Trim enabled prevents the invalid data being moved. This in turn frees up space on the SSD and reduces write amplification. Now the “moving company” only needs to focus on moving the current tenants and ignore the vacant homes.”
NOTE: Read OWC’s entire blog here: blog.macsales.com/21641-with-an-owc-ssd-theres-no-need-for-Trim
One of the most popular Trim tools is “Trim Enabler” from Cindori Software. Cindori continues the discussion:
“Every time you delete a file on your computer, the data still stays on the drive in segments called blocks. These blocks are not deleted until you need to use them again to write new data. Due to technical limitations in the NAND Flash design, only whole blocks can be deleted. This means that when you need to write new data, the SSD must perform time-consuming cleaning and maintenance of these blocks before your data is written. With Trim, your blocks can be cleaned instantly when you delete the data, leading to much less operations during the writing process which gives you better speeds and minimizes the wear on the drive.”
Cindori continues:
“In OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), Apple has introduced a new security requirement called kext signing. (A kext is a kernel extension, or a driver, in Mac OS X.)
“Kext signing basically works by checking if all the drivers in the system are unaltered by a third party, or approved by Apple. If they have been modified, Yosemite will no longer load the driver. This is a means of enforcing security, but also a way for Apple to control what hardware that third party developers can release OS X support for.
“Since Trim Enabler works by unlocking the Trim driver for 3rd party SSD’s, this security setting prevents Trim Enabler to enable Trim on Yosemite. To continue to use Trim Enabler and continue to get Trim for your third party SSD, you first need to disable the kext signing security setting.
“It is important to note that the kext-signing setting is global, if you disable it you should be careful to only install system drivers from sources that you trust.”
NOTE: Read their entire FAQ here: www.cindori.org/Trim-enabler-and-yosemite/
THE BAD NEWS
The only workaround is to turn off kext-signing, which, as Cindori describes is similar to “taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut,” because this affects every driver on your system, not just the SSD.
WHAT TO DO
If you have a 3rd-party SSD drive, check with the manufacturer to see if it works on Yosemite. (Assume that it does not.) At this point, you have two options:
Also, let Apple know – via Send Feedback to Apple inside Final Cut Pro, or other Apple applications – that they need to reconsider their policy. Speed is essential to all media creators. Apple needs to find a way to support Trim functions on all SSD drives, not just Apple systems.
SUMMARY
This is a big deal. If you have a 3rd-party SSD, you have the potential to be dead in the water on upgrade. For this reason, please contact the manufacturer of your SSD system – and read the supporting articles – before upgrading to Yosemite. Make sure you KNOW that your drive will work before you have problems.
Remember, Apple-supplied SSDs work fine. The issue is only with 3rd-party SSD drives.
OTHER IMPORTANT LINKS
OWC reports that their SSD drives don’t need Trim. You can read their entire article here:
blog.macsales.com/21641-with-an-owc-ssd-theres-no-need-for-Trim
Read the entire Cindori Software FAQ here: www.cindori.org/Trim-enabler-and-yosemite/
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92 Responses to CAUTION! SSD Drives and Yosemite [u]
My external SSD drives (in their own enclosures) are fine. So does this only apply to internally installed SSD drives?
Ben:
Thanks for the update. Neither blog specifies boot drives only, but I suspect that the problem applies principally to boot drives as that would cause the system to hang during launch.
A key thing to watch is whether speed drops on your SSD over time.
Larry
Hi Larry:
I went to the OWC blog and was relieved to see that OWC Mercury SSD drives do not need trim. Just this past week I replaced the system drive in my 2010 Macbook Pro and it works better than ever. As a side note, I had been having problems with my Macbook Pro running slow; taking too long to startup and load applications. I was seeing a lot of the spinning beach ball. I had plenty of memory, and both CPU’s had plenty of overhead. I looked at the Activity Monitor and discovered a process called mtmd using a great deal of resources. A little research showed that mtmd is MobileTimeMachineDaemon. It a 10.7x process that makes local Time Machine Snapshots on mobile computers. Here is a link to what it does and how to disable it via terminal command. http://pondini.org/TM/30.html. Once disabled the problems went away. Combined with my new SSD it’s like having a new computer.
Best regards,
Lee
Lee:
Thanks for the feedback.
Larry
Just talked with Apple Care Support concerning the OWC SSD DRIVES, end they told me that these are the same drives that the new Mac pros have in them. There is no issues with these drives, and Yosemite takes care of Any issues with trim.
Mike D:
Thanks for the update.
Larry
It is important to understand that the drives generally will still work, but without TRIM support (or a Sandforce controller which takes care of this onboard–in your SSD) you will develop performance issues over time because TRIM will not be maintaining your SSD.
Carey:
An EXCELLENT distinction!
However, there are reports in the field that when Trim Enabler is turned on and Yosemite is installed, the computer will not boot.
This is serious enough to recommend caution and verifying that your drives – and drive software – support Yosemite.
Larry
The performance advantages of TRIM, as measured by Toms Hardware, are relatively small. The main benefit seems to be decreasing wear-and-tear on the SSD. I am not clear as to when that wear-and-tear issue becomes important. Is it a cumulative effect which only matters when you’ve run for months without TRIM, or a daily problem?
Would it be a good idea to run most of the time WITH KEXT, and without TRIM? Then, once a week or month, implement TRIM (which requires disabling KEXT) for a day or so? Would that allow the drive to clean itself adequately, while still giving you the benefit of KEXT for everyday work?
Thanks, Apple!
Bob C
Bob:
This seems to be an reasonable suggestion – BUT! I don’t know enough about how SSDs work, technically, to recommend it.
Perhaps another reader with more technical experience, can contribute.
Larry
If you only wish to “trim” your SSD’s once in a while, then instead of turning trim on and turning KEXT off, there is a much better method.
Reboot your mac and Go into Recovery mode (while rebooting keep the Command + R buttons pressed). Once in recovery, go to Disk Utility. There, click on “Repair Disk”. Although there might be no problems with your disk, the essence is that at the end of the Repair Disk, the Disk Utility runs the trim command on the disk and that should probably do the trick. Check the messages that are displayed on the Disk Utility while you are repairing your SSD drive, you’ll see what I mean.
Let me know how it goes!! 🙂
Srini..
Is this documented anywhere? I don’t find a reference to Repair Disk running Trim.. and if it does, will it do so for non Apple drives?
You can now safely enable Trim on OS X Yosemite and El Capitan!
https://www.cindori.org/safely-enable-trim-on-yosemite-and-el-capitan/
Would like to repost BOB COLES question… I was thinking the same, how about running it without TRIM and turning it on once a month?
Also, is it better to let TRIM enabled or to have the kext enabled? Very confused and angry, damn Apple sh*t. Always getting on my nerves with those extra B.S. updates and unreasonable actions.
Jan:
As I told Bob, I don’t know the answer to whether turning Trim on once a month is a good idea or not.
However, given the two, kext-signing is more important, I think, than Trim – but not enabling Trim means that your SSDs will slow down significantly.
Larry
Thanks Larry,
So I guess downgrading to Mavericks is an option or else live with the idea of having wasted good money on a new SSD that doesn’t do what it should.
What did you do?
Jan:
Downgrading is an option. So it staying in touch with your SSD manufacturer and putting the heat on them to work with Apple to come up with a solution.
Personally, I have not yet upgraded to Yosemite.
Larry
I’ve been using a 240GB Crucial M500 SSD as a boot drive on my mid-2012 MacBook Pro for a few months now without any noticeable problems. I wasn’t aware (until now!) that non-Apple SSDs weren’t TRIM supported but since all my FCPX editing is on external USB3 and Thunderbolt discs I can’t think it would affect my editing. However I contacted Crucial and received this reply:
” ….all our new SSD’s got Garbage Collection as a part of the firmware on the drive and works regardless of which Operating System or file system the computer is using. Garbage Collection can only work when the SSD is idle, so if you install your SSD to a computer that will run without TRIM it’s important that you configure it so that the drive doesn’t go to sleep when it goes idle. Garbage Collection needs to be given time to work, but as long as it has the idle time it needs, the drive will maintain its high performance over time, despite the lack of TRIM.”
This *may* be the case with other manufacturers, so worth checking!
The only other point I’d make is that even a degraded SSD is likely to be quicker than a standard hard drive so the main problem is likely to be wear and tear over an extended period of time (as posted above).
Phil:
Thanks for sharing this information.
Larry
Nice! But what does it mean in a practical way “go idle” and how do you configurate that?
I would guess that’s referring to the Energy Saver in System Preferences and the option to “put hard discs to sleep when possible”. I’ve always unticked that anyway for video editing. But I don’t know when an “idle” state occurs!
@Phil or anyone
Phil, regarding those Thunderbolt HDs, are they SSD? If no, does your editing get faster using the two drives that way?
I edit myself and since I use only my internal SSD, and creating and deleting big files makes the TRIM that much more important,
I am thinking of getting an external drive too.
I read that it is best to have your software (Premiere Pro) on your boot drive and the video files on an external HD, but how would you describe your performance and how do these options compare with pros and cons?
1) Your setup (external SSD or external HDD)
2) Using it as me, everything on internal SSD (no TRIM)
3) External files on USB 3.0 HDD
4) External files on USB 3.0 SDD
Would also like you try to rank those 3 options – best to worst.
Jan,
The Thunderbolt and USB3 external discs I use are usually RAID0 configured dual hard drives which are plenty fast enough for my purposes (and I’ve edited projects with dozens of hours of video files). It is by far best practice to keep your video data on separate discs irrespective of the editing software; it is simply easier to manage and backup. So if my boot/system SSD does develop a problem I don’t lose any video data.
All right,…seems like the best thing to do.
Thanks for the heads up.
Dear Larry,
I haven’t upgraded to OS X Yosemite yet, since I want to make sure the bugs are worked out first, but you cautioned about 3rd party SSD drives in this context. That is a term with which I’m unfamiliar. I’m not aware any of my external drives is an SSD drive (how would I tell that?) and is it advantageous to use them, e.g. for video editing?
Martin:
An SSD drive is much more expensive than a standard hard disk and it holds less data. The BIG benefit is that it is much, MUCH faster than a standard spinning hard disk.
For this reason, you don’t “accidentally” buy an SSD drive – you consciously decide to spend more money to get less storage but faster speed.
As for upgrading, my general feeling is to wait until a “.01” or “.1” release comes out. Upgrading the operating system does not add any new features to either Final Cut or Premiere. So you aren’t missing anything in terms of editing by waiting a bit to upgrade.
Larry
There is one exception to this caution about third party SSD’s and TRIM, and that is the SSD Wrk for Mac line of SSD’s by Angelbird. These drives support TRIM natively.
Rod:
Thanks for letting us know.
Larry
I had the exact same problem with plextor m5 pro. Couldn’t boot. When connected to a window PC, SSD could be recognized by the system but could not be accessed.
Good thing was, my SSD was under warranty and plextor replaced with a new one.
I am going back to Mavericks.
Martin:
Thanks for the update.
Larry
If you are one of the many with Trim Enabler installed and can’t boot after upgrading to OSX Yosemite, then there is a fix to disable KEXT so that you can boot again. No need to return your drive, and you can re-enable KEXT and disable Trim Enabler later if you wish.
Just scroll down to the section titled ‘Recovering from stop sign on boot screen’ on the Cindori site below:
http://www.cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite/
While there’s no doubt TRIM will not hurt an ssd, the bulk of the market serving non-Apple ssd’s have their own garbage collection routines. Which are quite effective as long as the machine has some idle time. For the bulk of the users, this is a non-issue.
Turning off-signing versus running without either TRIM or garbage collection — go buy another drive.
Hi All,
Picked up a white 13″ 2009 Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook 5,2 4GB RAM. Running Snow Leopard on a 1TB WD HDD.
1. Removed and replaced HDD. 2. Installed new Toshiba 256GB SSD.
Holding option, Using a USB drive w Yosemite, I selected the Yosemite installation.
Greeted with a grey screen and prohibitory stop sign.
Using a USB drive set up to install Mavericks (successful w 5 computers previously, one model identical to my issue today), greeted with the stop sign.
With the SSD installed, I cannot access the Mac Recovery app to format my drive w Disk utility and install Mac OS X.
SOOO, I Reinstalled the original HDD. selected the Mavericks USB after restarting and option–stop sign.
If anybody can explain what might be happening, hit me. Jesus. What is going on?
Is there a kernel permissions problem on the motherboard? I’ve reset PRAM 50 times, and tried the SMC reset twice. Unsuccessful in resolving my issue in booting an OS X recovery via USB. With the original HDD re-installed, I downloaded NoSleep 1.3.3 via Safari. Upon finishing installing (again, this is Snow Leopard on HDD) an error message: “Oops!, NoSleep Kernel Extension is not loaded.”
I successfully installed Mavericks to the 256GB Toshiba SSD via external USB housing via my MacBook Pro. Installed it to the 13″ white MacBook 5,2 —— stop sign. &^%$#@# lol, dang..
What’s happening? Thank you,
Alex
I have the same problem. Have been gifted by the stop sign after upgrade to Yosemite and installed Trim Enabler, but I’ve tried to reinstall the system via USB stick, without sucess. Later that, I’ve been able to do a recovery by time machine backup. The system turn on once and folder question-mark showed up his face.
After that I’ve tried to install Mavericks, Yosemite again and nothing. Disk utility says “could not verify disk”. So, I got another Macbook and the disk was fine, could install the mavericks on it. Put again in my mac and NOTHING. Same errors.
I’ve bought another Samsung 840 EVO and THE SAME ERROR.
Now, I’m using my old HDD and everything is ok, but this thing is driving me crazy. I don’t know if the issue is on flat cable ou whatever. I know that my SDDs are ok and don’t know what’s wrong with my mac. (Tried to reset pram, nvram, xxxram).
Actually, this is a common problem as with time the cable for the HDD can wear through and break. I am afraid the cable might need to be replaced.
I’m surprised and disappointed by OWC saying their drives don’t need TRIM. In their blog, they say their drives use Sandforce controllers. Well Sandforce say (and surely they should know) that yes, you do need TRIM. They say that their DuraWrite technology is best augmented by TRIM.
TRIM is an essential part of proper SSD housekeeping. Without it, the drive has no idea what data is live and what is deleted and therefore it has to perform all its background garbage collection on both live and deleted data.
Think about the implications of that for one moment. If you imagine editing a 10MB PowerPoint document over the course of an 8 hour day, PowerPoint will autosave 48 x 10MB files = 480MB of data. 470MB of this is deleted (only the last autosave is “live”), but the drive cannot know this without Trim. So your 1 file has generated half a gigabyte of data that the drive now needs to manage, reading and writing to create free blocks. 48 times the necessary amount of reading and writing to the SSD is cause by not having TRIM.
This is not a sustainable way to run an SSD.
My 3 month old OWC mercury Electra 6G SSD with Yosemite installed completely corrupted. Do not think for one minute that installing an SSD makes your system more reliable. It clearly does not. I deleted the current backup to do a fresh backup when the system would no longer boot. Thankfully on this occasion a disk utility (Not Apple) allowed me to find around 70% of the data but it took three days. I now have a very different view of SSD, especially OWC’s.
Hello All,
Guys I have strange Problem, I bought new MacPro (late 2013) and I am using Yosemite. I have 2 external Sandisk Extreme II SSDs connected over USB3 to SATA connector. And both of them are not working. When I connect them to MacPro, it freezes the system and reboots system in a minute. Systems works for about 2-3 minutes maximum after plugging SSDs. If I try to drag and drop files on them, it copies about 200mb in a second and then freezes the system. The most strange thing is that both of this SSDs are working properly on my MacbookPro also using Yosemite. I want to return MacPro on this weekend to store, I think that there is a problem with USB connectors of Mac. Otherwise why both SSDs would work properly on my MacBookPro. But on the other hand all three external HDDs work properly on all USB ports of new MacPro. I am confused totally. Don’t know what to do.
Isa:
I would first contact Apple Support to see if they can resolve this.
Larry
All what Apple Care service said was please reboot your computer and after that asked me to bring brand new computer (which was bought 4 days ago) to service. Very bad service at Apple Care. I paid 174$ for nothing. Will refund money tomorrow. Quality of Apple Mac Pro does not worth that money.
Pingback: Apple OS X Yosemite i dyski SSD « TechnoBlog
Hello, I have a mid 2009 macbook pro with Snow Leopard 10.6.8 as the OSX still.
I Just purchased a crucial m550 256GB SSD.
I haven’t installed it yet because I am not quite sure whether to upgrade to Yosemite from Snow Leopard first or Install the new SSD drive?
Is the conversations in this thread saying I should not upgrade to Yosemite if I want to install my new SSD? I am not so technologically advanced. P What would be the best option if I just wanted to install Yosemite on a clean SSD slate.
Any help would be appreciated! Thank you.
Unless you love hassles, I’d just avoid this whole SSD-Trim-Yosemite situation.
Harvey, if I were you, I’d return the drive and get an Apple-certified SSD. That way you’ll be “in the family” with Apple, and safe to upgrade to Yosemite, and Yosemite’s successors.
Or stick with Snow Leopard.
Or… I don’t know whether this is an option: Can you upgrade to some OSX that is short of Yosemite, and won’t complicate your life the way Yosemite would?
@Bob Cole: That’s not good advice at all.
The best solution is to go to Mavericks, not Yosemite, or buy a Crucial drive. I’ve been using Crucial drives recently with no issues with Yosemite. The only reason I haven’t upgraded to Yosemite on my working MBP is because it’s a 250gb Samsung 840 that needs TRIM, so until this gets resolved properly this Mac will remain on Mavericks.
The other thing to bear in mind is that SSDs needing TRIM will degrade *over time*… well, over time this may well get resolved anyway so no need to panic either way right now!
So, just to clarify.
I have a Crucial Drive.
I want to upgrade my snow leopard macbook pro 2009 to Yosemite and install my Crucial SSD. This will work and I won’t encounter problems?
Should I upgrade to Mavericks before Yosemite to be safe? Does it matter? Also should I upgrade my hard drive first or update my OS first?
Thank you.
Harvey:
I am very uncomfortable saying this will work properly. A better answer is to go to Crucial and have THEM tell you it will work OK, and that they’ll support you if it doesn’t.
You don’t need to upgrade to Mavericks before upgrading to Yosemite. Generally, you upgrade the OS, then upgrade everything else.
Larry
As I said, I’ve been using Crucial SSDs with ALL operating systems, including Yosemite. Crucial state that their drives don’t need trim and that’s the main reason I ONLY buy Crucial at the moment,
It doesn’t make the slightest difference whether you upgrade to Yosemite, or Mavericks before or after you install the SSD, do it the way that involves the least work. If you are keeping the old HD as a backup then upgrade that before you clone it to the SSD.
I don’t know if it’s related, but I haven’t having issues with my hard drive as well, after the yosemite upgrade.
My system: Macbook Pro mid 2012, 500 GB HD (stock)
I did however the ‘optical drive removal’ hack (maybe I shouldn’t have but that’s a different story), and installed a Samsung SSD 250GB. The OS is installed on the SSD, and I’m using the 500 GB HD as a separate drive, for things like pictures, downloads, etc…
Everything worked well on Maverick, but I started having issues withe HD (not SSD, SSD works fine) after I upgraded to Yosemite. The HD came with the system, I have it plugged where the optical drive was. The HD shows up fine, but I can’t write, also TimeMachine is having trouble accessing it. I did some repairs, fixed permission issues, etc…it will work for a bit and stop working again. So I’m not sure what’s wrong…I’m pretty new with MAC, just converted from Windows, so some of the MAC concepts are still new to me.
Same issue here with an iMac 24″ 2009 model. I had OWC 240 SSD with Mavericks 10.9.3 running as boot disk and upgraded the original 1 TB internal from 10.9.3 to Yosemite and locked up turning on File Vault. Disk Utility showed “Incompatible Disk” on both drives! After 4 days of reading and trying everything possible I had to wipe both drives and I reinstalled Mavericks on both.
Then restored them from Time Machine BU’s and now disk permissions are corrupted on the 1 tb internal and the OWC SSD 240
will not mount. Disk Utility shows ” 33 KB Sandforce 200026BB Media” where SSD240 used to be!
Called OWC and they are sending an advance replacement drive (means have my CreditCard till the return arrives back) and have to tear apart my iMac again to install new drive when it arrives……. Not camping with a smile anymore!
If anyone has a work around for this Unmountable SSD drive I would much rather send the new one back
All comments appreciated
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Hi Larry,
You can enable TRIM on non-Apple SSD’s, and here is how:
http://www.return1.at/trim-enabler-for-osx/
Colin:
Thanks for sharing this link.
I need to STRESS that working in Terminal is not to be taken lightly. You are patching the operating system.
If Terminal is foreign territory, I would suggest you not do this. If you are comfortable in Terminal, this provides an intriguing work-around.
Larry
Where do I get a proper list of apple-certified drives that will support TRIM in Yosemite? Contacting Samsung for example might take months.
Andrey,
Only SSD drives that are Apple identified will have TRIM enabled. The script referenced above does some trickery to the IOAHCIBlockStorage kernel extension that bypasses the test to see if the drive is an Apple identified drive (I think it’s the serial number or Model) and loads the kernel extension regardless.
If it’s not an Apple drive (OEM) it won’t support TRIM without TRIM enabler, or hacking the kernel.
-colin.
I just talked with Crucial and they said regarding their SSD drives… “It does not need TRIM. It has awesome garbage collection that is so spectacular in every way that it’s entirely self-sufficient.” So It has some built in firm ware functions that take care of it when the drive is idle. So no TRIM needed on Crucial SSD drives.
Any claims from a manufacturer needs to be tempered with an objective third party analysis. All SSDs perform better with native TRIM.
I’m by no means an expert, but I wrote this article recently to explain why TRIM is important:
https://www.ramcity.com.au/blog/all-about-trim-for-ssds/139473
For further reading:
1. Presentation about TRIM and Garbage Collection from Kent Smith of LSI
http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/noindex/LSI_PRS_FMS2011_T1A_Smith.pdf
2. Articles from Tweaktown, written by Chris Ramseyer, their senior SSD Editor and in my opinion one of the leading experts on SSDs in the journalist world
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/41180/third-party-ssd-vendors-address-apple-trim-issue/index.html
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/4870/lsi_sandforce_5_series_ssd_firmware_trim_lost_and_found_performance_investigated/index.html
My other comment is still in moderation, so here’s a shorter version:
For further reading:
1. Presentation about TRIM and Garbage Collection from Kent Smith of LSI
http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/noindex/LSI_PRS_FMS2011_T1A_Smith.pdf
2. Articles from Tweaktown, written by Chris Ramseyer, their senior SSD Editor and in my opinion one of the leading experts on SSDs in the journalist world
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/41180/third-party-ssd-vendors-address-apple-trim-issue/index.html
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/4870/lsi_sandforce_5_series_ssd_firmware_trim_lost_and_found_performance_investigated/index.html
Sorry, Rod.
I didn’t see your earlier comment. Both are now approved.
Larry
Rod, I noticed you linked to one of my Flash Memory Summit presentations. I wanted to reply because with the sale of LSI to Seagate, we had to move our content to a new URL. Today you can reach my FMS 2011 presentation on TRIM and garbage collection at http://blog.seagate.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FMS-2011-T1A-Garbage-Collection-Kent-Smith_Final.pdf
There are also two blogs I wrote on TRIM if people wanted to read more about it.
1. http://blog.seagate.com/intelligent/can-data-reduction-technology-substitute-for-trim-in-an-ssd-and-drain-the-invalid-data-away/
2. http://blog.seagate.com/intelligent/did-you-know-hdds-do-not-have-a-delete-command-that-is-why-ssds-need-trim/
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I just shoot using SSD’s – All I need to do is transfer the video files from SSD to hard drive via a Mac… Does this trim issue afffect me?
Rod:
It depends. If you can see the SSDs on your desktop and all you need to do is transfer data, you should be OK.
If you can’t see them, well, now you have a problem.
Larry
You don’t need TRIM enabled on your MAC and don’t disable KEXT. What you can do is create a batch job that runs while you sleep that executes the TRIM function. You need TRIM for any flash type of product, but you have options on how to implement it. Normally you implement TRIM on the mount command. By not enabling TRIM at the mount stage, you could actually improve performance during usage while a little degraded performance will occur when running the batch job.
what do you do if you already installed? or tried to? i have a samsung ssd as startup drive and yosemite hangs on upgrade restart at gray/white screen. i can do nothing now. shuts down when i push power button. no “special” start commands work. machine is on but not accessible.
Geoff:
Contact the manufacturer of your SSD drive and see what they can do to help you.
Larry
I think that publishing this article is a great disservice; this article misstates the actual issue.
The issue is that Yosemite introduced a new security requirement called kext signing. This basically means that only Apple supported drivers are supported IF kext signing is ENABLED. So if you have a 3rd party TRIM, then driver will not be loaded. So to avoid this, you should disable kext sighing. See http://www.cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite/ for a complete discussion.
Another thing to note is the you really don’t need the TRIM to use a SDD. You only need TRIM to extend the life of the SDD. As far as the OS is concerned, it’s a non issue, because the SDD looks like another hard drive to it, which is by the design of the SDD. The SDD controller take care of logic involved for reading/writing to the SDD, which unlike a regular hard drive where the OS takes care of most of that logic.
I’m running Yosemite on a mid 2010 MacBook Pro with a Samsung SSD 840 EVO SDD as the boot drive, and never had an issue (either with TRIM or with out TRIM).
just agreeing with Mark M here. all true. i learned the same upon further investigation. for me I just had to reset pram and then install completed. of note, i still have trim enabled but clearly i would say not necessary. but system works fine.
My Intel SSD 520 480GB got bricked by this problem somehow. It won’t power up, and neither a Mac or a PC now recognizes it. Recovery failed for me with error 2000D so I thought about mounting the drive on another system and manually removing trim enabler. But mounting failed, it would accept my whole disk encryption password but not mount the filesystem. I manually removed the encryption (it took many hours while mounted over usb 2.0) and in the morning the disk was bricked.
Thanks Apple for not fixing your installer to catch unsigned 3rd party kernel extensions during install and disabling them.
Was using a Crucial M4 SSD on a older MacBook Pro without any problems on Mavericks. I never updated to Yosemite but a security update was applied. I am running OS X version 10.9.5. Booting from a USB works fine but trying to boot from the SSD only gets me to gray screen. I ran disk utility, reformatted drive, and reinstalled from a current backup. Never would boot. Started reading about all the problems with Macs and SSDs and said the heck with it. Went and bought a regular hard drive and things work fine. Going to put the SSD in my windows laptop. Windows has no issues with it. Just another case of Apple making their crap hard to use with anything other than Apple stuff. This is my second MacBook Pro cause the original one had processor that wouldn’t support the current OS. And I have an original Ipad that won’t upgrade the iOs as well. Thanks Apple.
While not SSD drives, I have 3 external hard drives that I use for graphics storage and my Time Machine. Since upgrading to Yosemite (HUGE mistake), one of my drives has been acting up. It mysteriously disappears from Finder yet can be seen in Disk Utility. It comes back for a while then disappears again for a while. Apple Care was no help and seemed mystified. I have the files backed up, it is just the idea. I complained to Apple, they sent me to WD who then said it was an Apple problem! Now I am afraid to buy another external for fear it will happen again. At least I learned my lesson and I will not upgrade OS X right away!
Kelly:
There was a problem reported a while ago now that Western Digital drives used software that had problems with Yosemite. I can’t say whether that is an issue with your hard drives. However, if you are using Western Digital, you might inquire from them, whether this issue affects your hard drives.
It may be that they need an update of some sort.
Larry
Thanks Larry. That is precisely the case however WD currently has no plans to provide a Yosemite compliant driver (nor any wag of when they might do that) which leaves myself and many like me in a bit of a lurch.
Sigh… Sorry to read that.
Well, at least we know what the problem is. And this is a good caution for people running Yosemite to avoid Western Digital drives for a while.
Larry
I pretty much exclusively run WD in my Mac Pro (internal and external)… Is there any clarification as to which WD drives are impacted (or is this just another reason to stay on Mavericks). Is this ALL WD drives or only certain ones.. Would be good to know which we’re talking about..
The one I am having issues with is a My Book Studio 2TB. My other WD 1TB and my 4TB Seagate are both working properly. The 2TB drive comes and goes. It will work for 2-3 days, sometimes, and then I get the message that the drive could not be read. I unplug it and leave it sit for a while (turning it off doesn’t do the trick), then I plug it back in and it will work for a time. I’ve transferred everything off of it. I had lengthy discussions with AppleCare and they are stymied as to what it could be.
Hi there! Following the thread regarding SSDs and Trim. I presume this applies to the2.5 inch drives as used in the Atomos Ninja and Shogun products ??? Can anyone comment before I make my purchase decision?
Thanks to all!
Hi Steve,
Just checking to see if you got any answers about this article applying to the SSD’s used in the Ninja. I am working with a ninja-2 and I had one of my ssd’s act up (the computer said that it could not read the drive and when I put it into the Ninja it said that it had a 0GB capacity ) and now I am just trying to figure out what went wrong.
Do you erase/format your drives on your computer and then also reformat in the Ninja? I did that and I think it might be the reason I had problems. Now I just format in the Ninja only. Any ideas about why?
There is a ton of info here… A few points.. It seems (at least for now) that a solution for those with internal non-Apple SSDs that are on Yosemite, that a good housekeeping practice would be to turn trim on with Trim Enabler (just don’t reboot) and let the machine idle overnight. Trim and the drive’s internal housekeeping (whichever that it) should do some cleanup.. It’s a workable, if not perfect, solution.. Until there is something more substantive from Apple or drive manufacturer’s seems to be the only way to go..
Something that may have been pointed out is that USB connected SSDs (USB 2 or 3) do not get any benefit from Trim as it won’t work across a USB connection. TRIM does work across Thunderbolt but I’ve not seen any reasonably priced 2.5 inch enclosures that are TB.. Especially compared to the price point of the UASP enabled Inateck (FEU3NS-1E make sure it’s the “E” version) ..
I just upgraded my 2013 Macbook Pro with the OWC Aura 480 Pro SSD – but agree that I think even with Sandforce that TRIM is a desirable thing to run..
Can I get some clarity on one post? Someone mentioned booting to Recovery and running disk utility repair disk.. Does this work regardless of TRIM or no TRIM being enabled? Also, does this help SSD Garbage Collection on External Drives? I have an Samsung EVO 840 (latest Firmware and Performance Restoration Run – Check Samsung site for details if you have an 840 class SSD).
Thanks for the post.. Lots of good info..
Jay S.
Relative to the comment about Western Digital drives.. I’m wondering if this is more the issue at hand?
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6607783?start=105&tstart=0
Seems Yosemite is having issues with externally connected drives.. Just spoke with Apple Tech support who said some of it is caused by a new preference in Yosemite where you have to “turn on” a view of external drives??
Jay S.
My recent experience with Yosemite was as follows : I just bought a 2nd hand 250 gb Lacie Rugged SSD (1,5 years old) The guy i bought it from did the Blackmagic speed test on a recent PB with thunderbolt. and it was perfect for me (250 MB/s write, 370 MB/s read). When i came home , i formatted the SSD hard drive and did a clean Yosemite install + update to 10.10.2. I also performed a time machine restore of my apps from my 1TB hard drive to the SSD.
I did the black magic speed test and got very low and unstable write speed (varying from lowest 15 MB/s, but most of the time average of 50 MB/s) while the read speeds were still ok. I had read about the TRIM function and looked for an app to set it (it was not turned on). I used Chameleon SSD Optimizer for Mac to set the TRIM. After this, surprisingly, my speed was back to normal, and now i have again an average of 250 MB/s write, 370 MB/s read speeds.
My guess is that the install procedure ‘fragmented’ the memory with lots of small files, necessary for the install, which get erased after or during install. After the restore of my time machine backup, those holes where probably filled with my apps and data… (Not sure how time machine reconstructs his files, but maybe it uses also some temporary storage on the target drive…
Maybe somebody can clarify why i had this huge speed drop ?
Since this article showed up at Jordan’s newsletter I have not upgraded to Yosemite due to the confusion that I have. I have a new MacPro 2013 with original Apple SSD as the boot drive and an external Samsung EVO SSD connected thru Thunderbolt as a media drive for editing in FCPX. I don’t know at this point if I am affected by this incompatiblity
or does this apply only to those that have 3rd party INTERNAL NON APPLE drives. What about my external Samsung is this affected too. I’ve never dealt with Trim before one way or the other. The Apple Forum has not been much help, can you clear things for me. I am still holding up to Maverick everything is good.
Thanks,
AppleLou
AppleLou:
I can appreciate your confusion. Based on what I’ve read, this situation affects non-Apple SSD drives whether connected internally or externally. However, not all drives are affected equally.
I would urge caution, but the best advice I have is to contact your drive manufacturer and get their recommendation.
Larry
Wondering if anyone has tried this:
Run your 3rd party SSD on Yosemite with kext enabled and no TRIM and once a week–or as needed– boot from a bootable Mavericks external and run a TRIM Enabler over night. In the morning, shutdown, remove the bootable external drive and restart with Yosemite.
I have a Crucial M4 512GB SSD installed in my 27″ 2009 iMac running OS X 10.10. Every five or six months the systems dies. Literally, I’ll be part way through doing something and it just stops. No response from anything so all you can do is power down, restart in Recovery Mode and restore from a backup. I’m convinced that this is because of the lack of Trim support in Yosemite for third party SSD drives.
In a way I can see why Apple has chosen not to support third party SSD drives and maintain tight control of Kernel extension signing but in other ways, it drives me up the pole and is another gripe that is pushing me towards Linux.
For what it’s worth and I apologise if others have mentioned this (there are a lot of responses to this post now) but there is an Austrian company called Angel Bird ( http://www.angelbird.com/en/prod/ssd-wrk-for-mac-929/ ) who do offer third party SSD drives with Trim support even in OS X 10.10. Goodness only knows how they have managed it but they are a small ray of light within Apple’s ever darkening shroud of intrigue.
This is NOT AT ALL a problem with 3rd party ssd drives, this is an APPLE PROBLEM !
Apple just switches off TRIM functionality for 3rd party drives because they want to make more profit by selling their drives.
and this is not an unproven accusation, it is verified by checking the code in their driver: for all drives not reporting themselves as APPLESSD (by their firmwares) TRIM does simply get switched off. Even if those drive are top notch and support TRIM perfectly on any Windows machine. That’s Apple.
Disk Sensei (by Cindori, the same people who made TRIM Enabler) claims it can now safely enable TRIM without disabling kext signing.
https://www.cindori.org/software/disksensei/
Apologies for jumping into this discussion so late in the stream.
We have been testing SSD technology in our QA labs for going on 5 years now. We have old and new drives and many of them are being continuously pounded on by our testing mechanisms. For the past two years, we have been paying attention to TRIM states on various drives and finally last year configured 2 Mac Pro 4,1 units as isolation units running 10.8.5 and Samsung EVO PRO 840 500GB drives as the boot drive – one with TRIM enabled using the kext hack, the other without.
After running 100’s of TB’s of I/O to these two systems (far more than an average user would achieve during a normal system life cycle) including deliberately filling the drives to capacity, we are not recognizing a noticeable difference in the performance between the two systems during boot or normal operations.
My desktop Mac Pro 6,1 has one of our ArGest cubes with 6 of the SamSung 500GB EVO PRO 850 drives running as a software stripe (RAID 0), and it has been used for testing with FCP X, Premier Pro, Media Composer, Sony Catalyst, and Davinci Resolve as both the edit and render drive. I get the same Black Magic Speed Test results today that I got when it was first created.
We also run similar tests with drives from OCz, Seagate, Micron, and a couple of rebranded units. Most of these have also lived very grueling lives in our labs and we have seen no issues with or without TRIM enabled.
The pundits throw around words like “massive” and “substantial” with regards to the supposed performance overhead required to blank and then write a NAND cell, but when you get to the actual numbers, they are so small as to be imperceptible during normal system read and write operations.
Also, since the TRIM command is a non-queued command (ANSI T13 Spec), depending on theTRIM implementation, you can actually cause more overhead to the drive than not using it.
Finally, many of the drive manufacturers offer a new garbage collection mechanism that has no requirement on TRIM for keeping things cleaned up. Crucial and Samsung do on their current drives and I believe that Seagate and Intel either are shipping or will be shipping drives with this feature.
Where we have found TRIM useful? We have a database server that we test against and when we simulate 35K IOPs or more, we do see a difference in the benchmarks compared to the same drive with TRIM enabled. But even then, the difference in performance is in the 15% range during writes and 5% range during reads.
Since I am a “proof is in the tasting of the pudding” kind of guy, this make me wonder how important TRIM truly is for normal computing operations – including video or audio editing.
Tim:
Thanks for these VERY helpful stats. Much appreciated!
Larry
Larry thanks for the update, I have been following this for months now. I just upgraded to 10.4.4, but have to say, being a bit of a Command-Line Idiot, just HOW does one initiate “TrimForce”?? Nothing in the linked article seems to describe the steps one must take. Any chance you or someone could spoon-feed us the “How-2”??
Stu Aull
Alaska
Hi Stu,
My recommendation to you is to not bother with it if your SSD is newer than 1 year old. As I mentioned in my post above, we are really not witnessing any noticeable performance differences under 10.10 (or other OS X version) with or without TRIM enabled.
As for using trim force, it’s pretty painless –
sudo trimforce enable
Turns it on
sudo trimforce disable
Turns it off
Thanks Tim!
Stu