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There are not SSDs with TRIM support available in my region that fit into my laptop (1.8", IDE, ZIF). I'm running Ubuntu 10.10.

Most articles (or questions on superuser) I've come across concering TRIM (or the lack thereof) date back to 2009, when not many SSDs with TRIM support were available and OS support was still very fresh.

I'm interested in the current situation, but I couldn't find too much information about it.

  • What are currently the "best practices" for using an SSD without TRIM under Linux?
  • I've read about the wiper script included with hdparm. Do I understand correctly that I could use this to free unused blocks, e.g. by running it once a month?
  • Some sources state that HFS+ (the default-filesystem of Mac OS X) doesn't suffer as badly from lack of TRIM as other filesystems. How about linux filesystems? Are there filesystems that are better suited for SSDs without TRIM than others?
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    Consider getting an SSD that has proper garbage collection, if possible. Online reviews generally also test for performance of a used drive without TRIM.
    – Daniel Beck
    Mar 31, 2011 at 7:37
  • Thanks. Problem is that there's only one suitable SSD available where I live, the 1.8" PATA MX-NANO ZIF SSD.
    – pableu
    Mar 31, 2011 at 8:19

2 Answers 2

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Consider using ext4 with the journal disabled. See this Ubuntu Forums thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1109698. Also, mount with the noatime option so that the last access time is not written on every access.

Note that wiper cannot be used because wiper requires TRIM.

Also note that while running without journalling may improve performance and reduce writes to the SSD, it may also increase the chance of data loss if the system crashes. Here is a kernel.org description of the journal, and an excerpt from Bovet and Cesati's Understanding the Linux kernel, Chapter 17, in which page 29-30 explains the advantage of using journalling. It may also increase the amount it takes to recover from a forced shutdown, as the system will have to perform a full fsck rather than just replay the journal and roll back any incomplete operations.

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I am at the point of performance degredation on my old Samsung SSD (model MMCRE28G8MXP-0VBL1) which, with my firmware version VBM1EL1Q, does not support TRIM and only supports "garbage collection" on NTFS filesystems. Since my filesystems are all ext4, I get no help from the SSD in clearing old blocks.

There is a newer firmware provided by Samsung that does enable TRIM for this drive, but it is not supported by my laptop manufacturer (Lenovo) and is apparently very tricky to get installed properly.

Because wiper.sh will not work on a drive that doesn't support TRIM, the solution in my case will be to free up as much space as possible, move my data (partitions?) elsewhere, then use the Secure Erase feature in my BIOS to clear the SSD, and finally move my data back.

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