OS X Lion finally to have TRIM support

[Jason Ptaszek]

TRIM support is finally coming to OS X with the recent addition of the new Macbook Pros and OS X Lion. Supposedly Apple may seed it to the rest of us running 10.6.6 with their next software update: http://osxdaily.com/2011/03/04/mac-o...-trim-support/

TRIM support, for those that do not know, is a software patch that controls how the hard drive deals with files that have been saved and then deleted. The biggest problem, besides price, with SSD's is that their performance is substantially affected by video and photo editing programs. With physical 3.5/2.5 inch hard drives the computer can interpret when something is added, modified and deleted without software interpreting it. But SSD is different, the drives have to be told when sectors have been modified or deleted on the drive. Without a necessary tool to interpret when these files have been modified or deleted, the performance on your drive becomes substantially slower the longer you use it. The only way to increase your HD performance with SSDs is to wipe the drive and reinstall everything, which to a editor or DIT is frustrating, to say the least.

Now, with TRIM support those days are over.

[David Dennis]

One thing I've noticed on my SSD-equipped 27" iMac is that start times for software have gone almost to zero, but the amount of time it takes for, say, a Photoshop file to load, hasn't changed. So it seems plausible that putting your media files on a spinning drive while leaving your operating system and applications on the SSD, is a good approach.

Anyone else had similar, or different experiences?

The SSD was a really expensive option ($750 of my near-$3,000 system price), but I'm surprised how addictive the performance has been. I didn't think it was that different when I got my new machine, but switching to my hard drive-equipped iMac feels like stepping back to the last century.

I'm just disappointed at the data load performance and wondering why. Is Photoshop just doing a lot of processing when loading large, multilayer files, or could there be some tweaks that would help?

D

[Jason Ptaszek]

So it seems plausible that putting your media files on a spinning drive while leaving your operating system and applications on the SSD, is a good approach

It is always a good idea to run your OS and your PS files on two different drives. It splits up your READ and WRITE abilities and has a slight increase in speeds.

I'm just disappointed at the data load performance and wondering why. Is Photoshop just doing a lot of processing when loading large, multilayer files, or could there be some tweaks that would help?

Which Version of photoshop are you using? CS5 has known issues of causing your computer to be sluggish. Typically more RAM will help this and running your computer in 64 bit mode has shown strong signs of increasing memory latency a bit

[Nils Ruinet]

Trim support on OSX is great news.
From what I've read, the new Macbook Pros have a slightly different version of OSX 10.6.6 which already adds this Trim support.
Unfortunately, Trim is only supported for Apple's SSDs, and not for third party drives. Let's hope they will add this in the future, because that would really be a stupid move.

[Jason Ptaszek]

Unfortunately, Trim is only supported for Apple's SSDs, and not for third party drives. Let's hope they will add this in the future, because that would really be a stupid move.

I saw this on another report too. To me this makes sense as a starting point since most people don't put their own SSDs into their computers, the majority of the drives utilizing this, atleast until Lion is released, will be Apple branded. With that being said, there is a possibility that Apple is still testing other manufacture SSD codes, and its only a matter of time before they seed it on another release.

[Lorenzo Straight]

TRIM support is finally coming to OS X with the recent addition of the new Macbook Pros and OS X Lion. Supposedly Apple may seed it to the rest of us running 10.6.6 with their next software update: http://osxdaily.com/2011/03/04/mac-o...-trim-support/

TRIM support, for those that do not know, is a software patch that controls how the hard drive deals with files that have been saved and then deleted. The biggest problem, besides price, with SSD's is that their performance is substantially affected by video and photo editing programs. With physical 3.5/2.5 inch hard drives the computer can interpret when something is added, modified and deleted without software interpreting it. But SSD is different, the drives have to be told when sectors have been modified or deleted on the drive. Without a necessary tool to interpret when these files have been modified or deleted, the performance on your drive becomes substantially slower the longer you use it. The only way to increase your HD performance with SSDs is to wipe the drive and reinstall everything, which to a editor or DIT is frustrating, to say the least.

Now, with TRIM support those days are over.

Thanks for that explanation, Jason. This is great.