MacBookPro3.1 SSD and TRIM support?

Question

Hi,
I recently replaced my HDD with an Intel X25-M (G2) 160Gb SSD drive and the mac is now _really_ fast. What I can tell from searching the net, is that the OSX operating system I'm using (10.6.4) is not yet supporting the TRIM feature of the disc. Eventually, the SSD could become slower...
Is there any information available to shed som light on this matter, such as:
a) will it be supported by Apple OSX in near future?
b) will I have to bother about it?
c) what else do I need to do in order to keep my SSD happy and fast?
Windows 7 do support TRIM and Intel provides the necessary (ToolBox) utility for Windows OS versions, but not for OSX.
Anyone?
Thanks in advance,
/Peter

Answer 1

I've done quite a bit of research on this subject and here's what I have come up with.
Based on anandtech's knowledge and reports, all of the Apple sold SSDs are OEM drives from either Samsung or Toshiba, and they all run custom firmware
source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-11-13inch-reviewed/4
I would say that this is what's going on:
1.) Apple's SSDs run their own custom firmware and take care of drive degredation in a custom, non-industry standard way (aka TRIM) -- what a surprise, just like everything else Apple does.
2.) Apple has done this on purpose so they can make money selling SSDs for more than a standard (non Apple OEM) SSD would cost you.
3.) Apple will never implement TRIM; they want you to buy their drives with their firmware, which by all accounts, do not need TRIM and do not suffer from poor performance after extended usage.
Consider the facts -- Windows 7, Linux, BSD, [insert every other os in the world here] has supported TRIM for over a year now. It's not hard to implement; maybe 20 lines of code at the most? All it does is pass an ATA command from the SATA controller to the disk at the right times.
If you want to use a non Apple OEM SSD, I would say there's a more than likely chance it will become slower after 5-6 months of usage...Depending on the level of degredation, class of drive, how much free space is left on the drive, it could be noticeable.
Some users have reported using non Apple OEM SSDs successfully on OS X, and some have run into problems.
A few notes:
1.) A degraded drive can be reset to factory condition by using a secure erase program. You would have to back your data up, secure erase the drive, then do a restore. Secure erase of an SSD takes about 1 minute, plus the time to backup and restore depends on what kind of storage you're backing it up to \ restoring it from. This is more or less a band-aid solution for using an SSD on an OS that has no TRIM support, and should really only be done if you are experiencing problems.
2.) SLC drives are a LOT less susceptible to degredation than MLC drives. Intel still has not implemented TRIM support for the X25-e series drives...some people say that SLC drives still need TRIM, but in my experience (I've been using the SLC Intel x25-e drives for over a year and a half now), they don't. They're a lot more expensive though..by a huge margin.
3.) The less free space an SSD has, the more chance it has at becoming degraded. The obvious solution here is to store media and larger files on a NAS, and then keep only important applications and the OS on the SSD.
I hope this has helped answer some of your questions.
One more thing, according to Anand, the Kingston’s SSDNow V+ Series and the SSDNow V Series work very well on OS's without TRIM support (OS X). If I were you, I'd go with that over the Intel drive. I've never used a Gen-2 X25-M, only the Gen-1 (abandoned and discontinued by Intel, replaced with Gen-2, never had TRIM implemented and never will); and on Windows XP, I experienced stutters and slowdowns after 6 months. I used the "band-aid" solution to get the drive back to health, and then I got rid of it and picked up the 64GB V series (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139132) -- unfortunately, that was around the time I switched to Windows 7, and I've never used the drive on OS X, so I can't confirm what Anand is saying; but I would take his word for it.
Since you already have the X25-M, I would keep an eye on things -- if it gets slow, back it up, do a secure erase (there's tons of programs out there, hdparm on linux is probably my favorite and the easiest to use), then a restore. Should give you another 5-6 months until you start experiencing problems again.