New SSD Formatted As APFS - Trim Always? Slow Boot and Performance?

[Zot3]

I picked up a 500GB SSD for my Early 2011 MacBook Pro and upgraded to High Sierra, which reformatted the SSD to APFS. I plan to not completely fill my disk and keep the usage under 80%.

I’ve read many posts on how enabling trim has caused slow boot times and performance in APFS. Is that still the case? Generally, how extended is the SSD lifespan with trim enabled? Is it as simple as purchasing a new SSD and cloning it will reset the lifespan if it does degrade without trim? I plan to buy a new MacBook Pro within the next couple years, but I want to make sure trim is worth it.

New to “trim”, so any tips is appreciated. Thanks so much!

 

[h9826790]

I picked up a 500GB SSD for my Early 2011 MacBook Pro and upgraded to High Sierra, which reformatted the SSD to APFS. I plan to not completely fill my disk and keep the usage under 80%.

I’ve read many posts on how enabling trim has caused slow boot times and performance in APFS. Is that still the case? Generally, how extended is the SSD lifespan with trim enabled? Is it as simple as purchasing a new SSD and cloning it will reset the lifespan if it does degrade without trim? I plan to buy a new MacBook Pro within the next couple years, but I want to make sure trim is worth it.

New to “trim”, so any tips is appreciated. Thanks so much!

1) For Macbook, you better go to the laptop forum, here is the desktop forum

2) Correct, APFS + TRIM may trigger the slow boot bug. It's not 100% hit rate, but can occur.

3) There is no rule about how much life span can be extended by using TRIM. It depends on the actual usage.

4) You should never run a SSD without TRIM. It's not just about life span, but also writing performance, etc. That possible few seconds boot time is relatively nothing. Especially for Macbook, how often you really boot the computer? You should use sleep most of the time, but not really turn it off.

5) Correct, you can simply buy a new SSD, clone from the existing boot drive, then boot from the new SSD.

6) If you want TRIM and guarantee fast boot, you can format the new SSD to HFS+, then clone your existing boot drive onto it. MacOS can boot, can run (flawlessly), but just won't allow you to update the OS (Mojave or later).

 

[Zot3]

Thanks for moving my post to the correct forum and answering so thoroughly!

I prefer to stay in APFS. Sounds like performance shouldn’t be affected and it’s just the boot time that may be a little slower?

 

[Audit13]

I have installed SSDs in a few MacBook Pros. I manually enabled trim for all of them and none of them experienced slow boot times unless the sata cable was faulty which is a common issue in the unibody MacBooks.

 

[2984839]

If TRIM is causing problems, I would just turn it off. You don't need it. I have several SSDs that have been in service for about 5-7 years and have never seen a trim command, with no noticeable performance losses.

 

[h9826790]

Thanks for moving my post to the correct forum and answering so thoroughly! I prefer to stay in APFS. Sounds like performance shouldn’t be affected and it’s just the boot time that may be a little slower?

In general, yes.

The write performance of APFS is slower than HFS+ in many different tests, but usually not that significant in real world usage. In most cases, the performance difference can be ignored.

 

[Zot3]

Thanks everyone for the help. I enabled trim and have noticed a slightly slower boot up, but nothing to worry about

 

[allan.nyholm]

I've noticed that with many of the slow boots off of an external device it's not caused by anything other than removing the boot-device set up either in the Startup Disk preference pane or via NVRAM settings using Terminal. Personally, once I set the active boot device via Startup Disk via Recovery Boot Mode or when in a macOS environment the system appears to search for the internal drive instead of taking off from the external device.

 

[h9826790]

I've noticed that with many of the slow boots off of an external device it's not caused by anything other than removing the boot-device set up either in the Startup Disk preference pane or via NVRAM settings using Terminal. Personally, once I set the active boot device via Startup Disk via Recovery Boot Mode or when in a macOS environment the system appears to search for the internal drive instead of taking off from the external device.

That's another issue.

For APFS + TRIM, if you boot verbose mode, you can clearly see the Mac perform a manual TRIM during boot, and hold at there for a few seconds (may be even up to a minute) when hit that bug.

What you said is just the system spend time on scan through the storages, and decide to boot from which one (because no specified in NVRAM). That occur before the OS start to load, and usually won't cost more than 30s.

 

[allan.nyholm]

That's another issue.

For APFS + TRIM, if you boot verbose mode, you can clearly see the Mac perform a manual TRIM during boot, and hold at there for a few seconds (may be even up to a minute) when hit that bug.

What you said is just the system spend time on scan through the storages, and decide to boot from which one. That occur before the OS start to load. And usually won't cost more than 30s.

oh, yeah.. I understand - I didn't mean to derail the thread with my post.. My WD Blue SSDis listed as not available for SSD trimming in macOS and yet in Windows 10 it's constantly "requires optimization" - so I today, after reading this thread just turned on TRIM in macOS for this SSD anyway, and after your post I'll try turning it off again and boot using Verbose mode and see if my SSD model gets trimmed on boot. Thanks for that tip. I never boot into Verbose - but for this particular reason I will try it.

I won't comment further on what could be perceived as a derailment - just a quick info.


Edit.. I am going to comment further...is there a way to see the log file after the fact? Or pause the process during Verbose mode? I can't see a thing because the text is soo tiny and runs by so fast I can't even see what's actually happening. 27" Retina monitor? Can I set the display to 1920x1080 before a reboot and expect this to last during the Verbose mode?
Edit2: After Googling I found out that I can read all that goes on in the system.log file and there are no traces of a TRIM command present there. I am doing this wrong..

Also, quick question for those knowledgeable in the APFS filesystem; can the defragment flag do anything on top of TRIM or is this flag not good at all? I admit I have defragment turned on for the whole SSD I boot off of.

 

[restcure]

My WD Blue SSDis listed as not available for SSD trimming in macOS and yet in Windows 10 it's constantly "requires optimization"

First, a disclaimer: I've never used Windows 10, but I found this solution while searching for Mac SSD trim info.
It comes from a Microsoft "Solve a Bug, Introduce a Bug" Special from a recent update, 2004 or some such, where SSDs are optimized (trimmed) on what should be a regular schedule, but the frequency is ignored and performed every reboot instead.
In the Defragment and Optimize app, Change settings -> Choose window, and uncheck the box(es) for your SSDs.

And, of course, if you already found this out, or Microsoft fixed it, my apologies for pulling you away from important stuff.

 

[allan.nyholm]

First, a disclaimer: I've never used Windows 10, but I found this solution while searching for Mac SSD trim info.
It comes from a Microsoft "Solve a Bug, Introduce a Bug" Special from a recent update, 2004 or some such, where SSDs are optimized (trimmed) on what should be a regular schedule, but the frequency is ignored and performed every reboot instead.
In the Defragment and Optimize app, Change settings -> Choose window, and uncheck the box(es) for your SSDs.

And, of course, if you already found this out, or Microsoft fixed it, my apologies for pulling you away from important stuff.

I did read some headline about Windows 10 2004 optimizes drives too often" Probably on Neowin.net - I didn't think of reading the article so for you to give me some additional information is great.

I admit to not quite remembering the phrasing, but its' either "Needs Optimization" or "Requires Optimization" and it it occurs if I take off macOS and clean install any Windows 10 - I think from 17xx to now 2004.

I think of it as, "how come that my drive in System Information on macOS doesn't list my drive as being capable(a clear No) of trimming here when and if I boot into a competitor's OS like Windows 10, that I get TRIM functionality out of the box?"
I guess I'm just not that smart to figure it out.

 

[JMVB]

Has this problem been solved?