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If you replaced the Enable TRIM on Mac With SSD, which you should do, you already know how much faster your computer is. But we will show you how to avoid making this one simple mistake that many of us do when we install a new SSD. OS, unlike Windows, does not turn on the TRIM command for a self-installed SSD by default. (TRIM is already turned on if your Mac came with an SSD.)
With TRIM, the operating system can tell an SSD which data blocks are no longer being used and can be wiped internally. This makes the drive work better and faster, and most importantly, it makes it last longer. Here you can find out more about that. In the end, if you want your SSD to last longer, you need to make sure TRIM is running on your Mac.
How to Enable TRIM on Mac With SSD
- Open Launchpad > Other, run Terminal. Or you can find it with Spotlight by pressing Command + Space key combinations.
- Type in this command and press Enter:>sudo trimforce enable
- Type your password when prompted, and hit Enter.
- The system will display a notice, then ask you if you are sure you wish to proceed. Type in “y” and then press enter.
- The system will then indicate that it will reboot and ask you if that’s OK. Type “y” again then press enter.
What Is TRIM, and Why Do You Need It?
Writing to an SSD is very different from writing to a traditional hard drive. First, the SSD erases the data in the flash memory cells and then writes new data into them. This process is called a program/erase cycle or P/E cycle. There is one thing to keep in mind, though. An SSD can only handle a certain number of P/E cycles. Writing to an SSD is like writing with a pencil on a piece of paper:
if you erase the same spot too many times, it can wear out. Wear levelling, which stops SSD memory cells (the pages) from wearing out, is one way that manufacturers deal with this problem. The memory cells in SSDs are set up in pages and blocks. With an SSD, you can write on a page at any time, but you can only delete one block at a time. This is a problem. Each block has a certain amount of data (2 to 8KB) on a certain number of pages (between 32 and 256).
Is it Safe to Enable TRIM on Your SSD?
Whether or not you should do this depends on the SSD you have in your Mac. Apple doesn’t want to be blamed for any problems, so OS X hides this feature behind a command and a scary warning message. Every solid-state drive uses TRIM in a slightly different way, and many SSD makers only really test for compatibility on Windows.
Similar problems could happen if you turned TRIM on for such drives on a Mac. There have also been reports that TRIM on Linux doesn’t work right with some Crucial drives. In fact, the Linux kernel has a list of SSDs that don’t work right with TRIM.
FAQs
They have their own ‘filing’ system. So the computer says ‘delete this page’ and the SSD does it automatically. It’s a bit like having your own personal secretary to do your filing. For those SSD’s it’s actually better to keep TRIM turned off and leaving it all to the secretary, so to speak.
To check if TRIM is on; Step 1: First of all, you need to click the “Start” button on your system and type cmd. Step 2: Once you have done that, you need to right-click “Command prompt” and run it as administrator. Step 4: If the result is DisableDeleteNotify = 0, the TRIM is enabled on your SSD.
Click on System Report. On the left pane of the System Information window, under Hardware, navigate to SATA/SATA Express (if you use a standard SATA SSD) or NVMExpress (if you use an NVMe SSD).