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Hardware Mac SSD performance and TRIM in OSX

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Sifter3000, 1 Jul 2010.

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  1. Sifter3000

    Sifter3000 I used to be somebody

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    Sifter3000, 1 Jul 2010
    #1
  2. Guinevere

    Guinevere Mega Mom

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    Hmmm interesting, as an owner of a late 2009 MB Pro, what I'd really love to see is whether there would be any difference with a brand new "out of the box" SSD compared to the one you guys received in the Air. I've got a mechanical HD in the lappie at the mo, but would really love to see a 256GB SSD in there.

    Is it "possible" that the SSD you tested was so thrashed by other reviews, it was suffering as a result? I don't know, maybe some built in "wear leveling" at it's maximum?

    It feels to me though that TRIM isn't really needed on a MB (At least with the SSDs apple use). I wonder if that statement still stacks up when installing your own SSD.
     
    Guinevere, 1 Jul 2010
    #2
  3. mi1ez

    mi1ez Modder

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    It's just as well the results don't drop on the dirty SSD since the throughput's so low to begin with! still, good for battery life and noise, eh?
     
    mi1ez, 1 Jul 2010
    #3
  4. DarkFear

    DarkFear What's a Dremel?

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    Would be interesting to see a comparison between the "stock" SSD and a "normal" SSD that you can buy in a shop or something...
     
    DarkFear, 1 Jul 2010
    #4
  5. fodder

    fodder Minimodder

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    I assume being a mac that you cannot take the SSD out and repeat the tests on a PC?

    Also, being Apple, you will not get specific answers to performance unless it is a positive result. Believe me, I have worked with them for many years. If it doesn't make them look good, no-one seems to know.
     
    fodder, 1 Jul 2010
    #5
  6. crazyceo

    crazyceo What's a Dremel?

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    Wow, I'm completely unimpressed yet again by Apple performances.
     
    crazyceo, 1 Jul 2010
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  7. aron311

    aron311 What's a Dremel?

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    Having just bought a MacBook Pro, I'd love to see you test with a few other off the shelf SSD's to see how they compare! Thanks for this!
     
    aron311, 1 Jul 2010
    #7
  8. Fabou

    Fabou What's a Dremel?

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    With that conclusion on the importance of the OS on the SSD performance over time, I have ta ask a linux based OS test to see what comes out.
     
    Fabou, 1 Jul 2010
    #8
  9. Sifter3000

    Sifter3000 I used to be somebody

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    It's possible, but we did reformat the Air using an option in the OS X installer that sets all the bytes in the disk to zero - it's effectively the same low level format we do for SSDs when testing them under Win 7.

    Retail SSDs in Macs is next up I think :)
     
    Sifter3000, 1 Jul 2010
    #9
  10. Jamie

    Jamie ex-Bit-Tech code junkie

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    Why didn't you install an off the shelf SSD in the Macbook Air to compare to the one supplied?

    Did you try disabling journaling to see if it had any effect on the performance?
     
    Jamie, 1 Jul 2010
    #10
  11. Sifter3000

    Sifter3000 I used to be somebody

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    Cos the Air doesn't have a 2.5in SATA connection of course :p
     
    Sifter3000, 1 Jul 2010
    #11
  12. j_jay4

    j_jay4 Minimodder

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    Surely you can get your hands on a macbook pro
     
    j_jay4, 1 Jul 2010
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  13. DaveMon

    DaveMon The end is nigh! Repent!

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    Isn't the implementation of Garbage collection more important.

    As the drives will keep themselves tidy regardless of the OS or filesystem?
    eg. the OCZ Vertex and similar.
    The firmware supports TRIM and GC.
     
    DaveMon, 1 Jul 2010
    #13
  14. Cei

    Cei pew pew pew

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    Definitely need to see what happens when you put a retail, new, modern SSD in that 2008 MacBook Pro you have sitting around for podcasts. The Air is well due for an update, so I'm not suprised its SSD is dating from 2008...

    As a side note, you can get off the shelf SSDs for the Air, but they're not exactly common due to the size (The Air uses physically smaller drives, think the old iPod 1.8" HDDs).
     
    Cei, 1 Jul 2010
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  15. Guinevere

    Guinevere Mega Mom

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    Earlier Airs used a sata-LIF connection (pretty much only used by Apple AFAIK) but the rev B's used a Micro Sata which you can get adapters for
     
    Guinevere, 1 Jul 2010
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  16. Bakes

    Bakes What's a Dremel?

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    It would probably be a good idea to install Windows on the Mac using bootcamp and test (using all of your usual Windows tools) just to see if it's OSX being good or the SSD doing something freaky.
     
    Bakes, 1 Jul 2010
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  17. digitaldave

    digitaldave What's a Dremel?

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    had my OCZ vertex SSD in macbook pro for almost a year now on snow leopard and can report 0 slowdown, it is used daily too.
     
    digitaldave, 1 Jul 2010
    #17
  18. capnPedro

    capnPedro Hacker. Maker. Engineer.

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    TRIM is unimportant is when deleting files the OS actually deletes them. I.e. resets the data on the SSD to 0s rather than just deleting the file's pointer in the filesystem's File Allocation Table.

    As a followup, you could test a non-TRIM enabled SSD under Linux with an ext3/ZFS filesystem (filesystems that never need to be defragmented too).

    Uhhhh what? 138 is like 53% of 258. Performance plummeted by an astonishing 47%.
     
    capnPedro, 1 Jul 2010
    #18
  19. Sifter3000

    Sifter3000 I used to be somebody

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    Gah, sorry, fixed. :S
     
    Sifter3000, 1 Jul 2010
    #19
  20. mark_dsp

    mark_dsp Access to HF, bones are overrated!

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    I did wonder if it might be related to file structure in the way that Linux's ext 3/4 copes much better with fragmentation than Window's NTFS/FAT therefore needing significantly less defragging, if indeed any at all is needed.

    However checking back over a few articles from Linux magazine it would seem earlier SSDs still struggled with early kernels due to a lack of TRIM support. I would guess therefore that the logical explanation is either that OSX has TRIM or the SSD is too slow to notice any significant changem which I guess in a way is an astonishingly long way of saying.... what he said!
     
    mark_dsp, 1 Jul 2010
    #20
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