AppleInsider Staff
Some four years after adding TRIM support for first-party solid state drives to OS X, Apple incorporated the command for aftermarket drives as part of Tuesday's OS X 10.10.4 update.
Spotted by AppleInsider readers, the new capability allows users to enable TRIM functionality on third-party SSDs without resorting to unsanctioned workarounds or software. Prior to the change, Apple only supported TRIM on original Mac SSDs.
Enabling TRIM for non-OEM drives requires the trimforce command be entered into Terminal, specifically, sudo trimforce enable. The system throws up a message warning users of potential incompatibility with certain SSDs before performing a reboot operation.
ArsTechnica reported on OS X TRIM functionality earlier on Tuesday.
Part of the ATA standard, TRIM helps optimize garbage data handling in SSDs by earmarking files no longer in use for permanent deletion. Unlike conventional spinning hard drives, SSDs perform erase operations before writing new files, meaning multiple erase/write operations could create a backlog of garbage bits that gradually slow the system down.
TRIM support for OEM drives first appeared in a beta for OS X 10.7 Lion in 2011.
Christine McKee
William Gallagher
Sponsored Content
Malcolm Owen
Mike Wuerthele and Malcolm Owen
Andrew Orr
53 Comments
About time! Maybe this is a sign that Apple's finally going to start allowing user-replaceable parts again (I can dream, can't I?)
[quote name="Durandal1707" url="/t/186992/apple-adds-trim-support-for-aftermarket-ssds-in-os-x-10-10-4#post_2742678"]About time! Maybe this is a sign that Apple's finally going to start allowing user-replaceable parts again (I can dream, can't I?)[/quote] Yep, I can definitely see Apple bulking up the next revisions of their machines, adding complexity and thickness, in order to allow "user replaceable" parts. Totally happening.
About time! Maybe this is a sign that Apple's finally going to start allowing user-replaceable parts again (I can dream, can't I?)
I think a big reason for this change is external Thunderbolt drive arrays using SSDs, especially for the Mac Pro. They appear to the system the same as an internal SATA adapter card and drive.
[quote name="Slurpy" url="/t/186992/apple-adds-trim-support-for-aftermarket-ssds-in-os-x-10-10-4#post_2742679"] Yep, I can definitely see Apple bulking up the next revisions of their machines, adding complexity and thickness, in order to allow "user replaceable" parts. Totally happening.[/quote] Technically, the SSDs on Apple's laptops could be swapped out [i]right now[/i], because they're on a slot. It's just a completely non-standard slot, which means there aren't any third party drives out there for you to buy (other than OWC's crappy SandForce-based ones).
Even Ubuntu will only run trim on Intel and Samsung SSDs by default. The trim implementations on many of the SSDs out there is poorly implemented it seems.