SSD, TRIM, GARBAGE, WIPE, etc. etc.

[dq]

Guys,

I've done too many hours reading on this subject and I really cant spend any more time.
My eyes are totally burnt.. I've come to the conclusion that TRIM is necessary otherwise you lose performance (ok yes). If your drive doesnt support it and there is no firmware to follow. Can someone advise on the next best thing? Is there any software for a reasonable cost that I can use to keep my SSD running at optimum performance.

I have the sony VPC X11 super light laptop that comes with the samsung 256GB SSD disk.
(MMDPE56GFDXP-MVB ATA Device) the firmware is (VBM25S1Q).

I've even found articles that explain to you how to disect your tiny device and put a totally different SSD in there.. Mine is a little too new for that just yet

Is there anyway I can enable TRIM or even buy software to keep up the performance.
The windows 7 XP index is reading 6.4 presently and it is pretty quick. Still very new though.

Thanks!

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

To have TRIM enabled, you need two things:

-SSD firmware supporting it
-OS/drivers supporting it

Since your drive doesn't support it, there isn't anything you can do for that.

Now as a TRIM substitute, some drives have built-in "garbage collection" (GC) that basically acts similar to TRIM, but this would be specific to each SSD that does GC (there is no standard on how to implement GC, while TRIM is a standardized ATA command). So you can look to see if your drive has some sort of GC that will work.

Now there is a procedure that should work, called Tony Trim. That manually cleans the SSD of "dirty" blocks. I've never used it, but it seems that lots of people have had success with it.

My first thought would be to see if you have some sort of GC. If not, I would just use your laptop as normal, and see if you even notice any slowness in the SSD (you might never notice). If you notice a real speed decrease, try the Tony-trim procedure and see if that helps.

But you might never see a slowdown in day to day usage, so don't worry to much unless you really see a difference.

 

[dq]

To have TRIM enabled, you need two things:

-SSD firmware supporting it
-OS/drivers supporting it

Since your drive doesn't support it, there isn't anything you can do for that.

Now as a TRIM substitute, some drives have built-in "garbage collection" (GC) that basically acts similar to TRIM, but this would be specific to each SSD that does GC (there is no standard on how to implement GC, while TRIM is a standardized ATA command). So you can look to see if your drive has some sort of GC that will work.

Now there is a procedure that should work, called Tony Trim. That manually cleans the SSD of "dirty" blocks. I've never used it, but it seems that lots of people have had success with it.

My first thought would be to see if you have some sort of GC. If not, I would just use your laptop as normal, and see if you even notice any slowness in the SSD (you might never notice). If you notice a real speed decrease, try the Tony-trim procedure and see if that helps.

But you might never see a slowdown in day to day usage, so don't worry to much unless you really see a difference.

Top man..! - Many thanks.

(If there are any other inputs please do let us know).

 

[Hacp]

To have TRIM enabled, you need two things:

-SSD firmware supporting it
-OS/drivers supporting it

Since your drive doesn't support it, there isn't anything you can do for that.

Now as a TRIM substitute, some drives have built-in "garbage collection" (GC) that basically acts similar to TRIM, but this would be specific to each SSD that does GC (there is no standard on how to implement GC, while TRIM is a standardized ATA command). So you can look to see if your drive has some sort of GC that will work.

Now there is a procedure that should work, called Tony Trim. That manually cleans the SSD of "dirty" blocks. I've never used it, but it seems that lots of people have had success with it.

My first thought would be to see if you have some sort of GC. If not, I would just use your laptop as normal, and see if you even notice any slowness in the SSD (you might never notice). If you notice a real speed decrease, try the Tony-trim procedure and see if that helps.

But you might never see a slowdown in day to day usage, so don't worry to much unless you really see a difference.

Most drives have both TRIM and garbage collection. Without garbage collection, how will the drive clean out invalid blocks? Trim tells the SSD "X block is deleted in the operating system, its invalid now." The ssd uses that info and tells garbage collection,"Here is the invalid data. Collect the data and dump it."

Perhaps what you're talking about is aggressive or active garbage collection. Passive garbage collection waits for the drive to fill before collecting garbage, kind of like how you wait until your garbage can is filled before throwing it outside. Active garbage collection collects garbage even before the drive fills up. Imagine every time your garbage can fills half way, you go and throw the waste away.

So why do some manufactures like passive garbage collection instead of active? Because they have a limited amount of write cycles, or garbage bags. Intel SSDs have on average 5k "garbage bags". If you throw away trash too frequently then you will run out of garbage bags very fast.

 

[dq]

Most drives have both TRIM and garbage collection. Without garbage collection, how will the drive clean out invalid blocks? Trim tells the SSD "X block is deleted in the operating system, its invalid now." The ssd uses that info and tells garbage collection,"Here is the invalid data. Collect the data and dump it."

Perhaps what you're talking about is aggressive or active garbage collection. Passive garbage collection waits for the drive to fill before collecting garbage, kind of like how you wait until your garbage can is filled before throwing it outside. Active garbage collection collects garbage even before the drive fills up. Imagine every time your garbage can fills half way, you go and throw the waste away.

So why do some manufactures like passive garbage collection instead of active? Because they have a limited amount of write cycles, or garbage bags. Intel SSDs have on average 5k "garbage bags". If you throw away trash too frequently then you will run out of garbage bags very fast.

Totally understood, but what about in the case your SSD doesnt support TRIM.
Like mine. Windows 7 supports it and it is switched on (whilst doing fsutil - even though my convential hard disk laptop also has it switched on for some bizare reason?).
But my actual drive doesnt have TRIM. So I was wondering how to 'repair' or do some sort of manual trimming? If such a tool exists.

 

[Hacp]

Totally understood, but what about in the case your SSD doesnt support TRIM.
Like mine. Windows 7 supports it and it is switched on (whilst doing fsutil - even though my convential hard disk laptop also has it switched on for some bizare reason?).
But my actual drive doesnt have TRIM. So I was wondering how to 'repair' or do some sort of manual trimming? If such a tool exists.

There is no manual trimming if your drive doesn't have trim. The only way to restore performance is to perform a Secure Erase using HDDerase(via IDE). Otherwise, windows will choose when to overwrite deleted files, which informs the drives that XXX info is invalid and therefore needs garbage collection.

 

[dq]

There is no manual trimming if your drive doesn't have trim. The only way to restore performance is to perform a Secure Erase using HDDerase(via IDE). Otherwise, windows will choose when to overwrite deleted files, which informs the drives that XXX info is invalid and therefore needs garbage collection.

Sorry and excuse the ignorance.. Can you elaborate a little?
I dont think I totally understand? Thanks pal.

 

[Hacp]

Sorry and excuse the ignorance.. Can you elaborate a little?
I dont think I totally understand? Thanks pal.

Ok I wrote two pages but I can explain it in a simple way. You have 4 states. A,B,C,d

A=A piece of data is useful to both the OS and hard drive.
B=Data is useful to the Hard drive but not the OS.
C=Useless data
D=Clean block

Simple right? Data starts as type A. Lets say a 12 pack of soda

When you tell Windows to delete a file, Windows makes a note to itself."Ok I have 4 soda cans I need to recyle. I'll hide them under my bed so everything looks clean, but I'll worry about it later." Thus, Windows knows that there is useless data(soda cans) under his bed, but his mom(hard drive) doesn't. It type of data is type B.

Type C data happens when Both the OS and the hard drive know that the data is useless. When both Mommy and Windows knows that the soda cans that need to be recycled.

Normally, this happens when the hard drive is filled up(or there is no more space under the bed). Windows sees the hard drive is filled up and needs to write new information so it tells to hard drive to write over "deleted" or useless data. An analogy would be Windows' wants to drink a new soda can but it needs to chuck the old bottle in mom's way so she knows to throw it away in the future.A crude method since the space under the bed still has all these empty bottles but hey, it works!

However, there is another way for windows to tell the hard drive that the data is useless before the drive is filled. That is what trim does. With trim, the OS can communicate with the drive and tell it, "Hey, Mom, I have a bunch of soda cans under my bed, FYI"

Type D data is a clean block. A bunch of zeroes. Unless your drive is brand new, there are very few clean blocks on your SSD. How does a a block get cleaned? You have type A,B, and C data on a dirty block. The SSD copies type A and B(but not c) data to a fresh block and wipes the original block. Now how much free space do you have? You have a new clean block, plus all all the space previously occupied by type C data, which didn't get copied over. This is called garbage collection.

As you can see, you can have Trim, but without garbage collection, you'll just have a bunch of type C data all over your drive. Pretty useless if you ask me.

 

[AlgaeEater]

Ok I wrote two pages but I can explain it in a simple way. You have 4 states. A,B,C,d

A=A piece of data is useful to both the OS and hard drive.
B=Data is useful to the Hard drive but not the OS.
C=Useless data
D=Clean block

Simple right? Data starts as type A. Lets say a 12 pack of soda

When you tell Windows to delete a file, Windows makes a note to itself."Ok I have 4 soda cans I need to recyle. I'll hide them under my bed so everything looks clean, but I'll worry about it later." Thus, Windows knows that there is useless data(soda cans) under his bed, but his mom(hard drive) doesn't. It type of data is type B.

Type C data happens when Both the OS and the hard drive know that the data is useless. When both Mommy and Windows knows that the soda cans that need to be recycled.

Normally, this happens when the hard drive is filled up(or there is no more space under the bed). Windows sees the hard drive is filled up and needs to write new information so it tells to hard drive to write over "deleted" or useless data. An analogy would be Windows' wants to drink a new soda can but it needs to chuck the old bottle in mom's way so she knows to throw it away in the future.A crude method since the space under the bed still has all these empty bottles but hey, it works!

However, there is another way for windows to tell the hard drive that the data is useless before the drive is filled. That is what trim does. With trim, the OS can communicate with the drive and tell it, "Hey, Mom, I have a bunch of soda cans under my bed, FYI"

Type D data is a clean block. A bunch of zeroes. Unless your drive is brand new, there are very few clean blocks on your SSD. How does a a block get cleaned? You have type A,B, and C data on a dirty block. The SSD copies type A and B(but not c) data to a fresh block and wipes the original block. Now how much free space do you have? You have a new clean block, plus all all the space previously occupied by type C data, which didn't get copied over. This is called garbage collection.

As you can see, you can have Trim, but without garbage collection, you'll just have a bunch of type C data all over your drive. Pretty useless if you ask me.

Dear god man you deserve a medal for that post. I haven't had anyone break it down into simple terms like that... at all. Good job!

By the way is there anyway to force garbage collection? I've heard to just literally copy over large files onto the SSD until it's nearly full and then delete... but then I kinda think that would cause the deleted files to be in queue for TRIM the next time around; defeating the purpose of running the GC by copying those files (if you catch my drift).