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I recently upgraded the firmware on my SSD to support TRIM and upgraded to Windows 7. How can I tell whether Windows is recognizing the drive as SSD and using TRIM correctly?

2
  • 1
    Which SSD and firmware are you using?
    – Sim
    Nov 1, 2009 at 23:16
  • Crucial 128GB M225 firmware version 1819
    – Dan Hook
    Nov 2, 2009 at 2:48

5 Answers 5

12

According to the Crucial User Forums - Is TRIM Running? to test if TRIM is enabled run the following in an administrative command window.

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

If it comes up as 0 then it is enabled.

Have a read of the comments of Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives and this Intel Community Forum for more info.

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  • 7
    Unfortunately this might be too high-level and inconclusive. Google disabledeletenotify and you will find the same quote everywhere which says this among other things: "When the disk driver receives the command, it will either act on it or ignore it."
    – Bender
    Nov 2, 2009 at 17:13
  • 6
    Does this really tell you if the drive is using TRIM, or does it just tell you if the OS supports TRIM? I tried this on a Windows 7 installation with no SSDs, but that command still returned 0.
    – Nate
    Jan 18, 2012 at 22:24
  • 5
    -1 I receive a 0 despite not even having a SSD. It’s amazing how many people blindly upvote without first checking themselves.
    – kinokijuf
    Oct 18, 2014 at 14:30
  • There is a duplicate question with a better answer here: superuser.com/a/1088697/195088 The answer given by i3v is probably the best answer, though it doesn't have the votes for it.
    – zaTricky
    Jul 6, 2016 at 7:29
11

I'm still looking for an authoritative answer, but I noticed that on my machine, automatic defragging is scheduled for all of my HDDs, but not my SSD. I think this means Windows is recognizing the disk as an SSD.

The click-by-click version of the answer:

  1. Right click on a disk drive, go to properties.

  2. Select the Tools tab and click on Defragment now...

  3. Click on Configure schedule...

  4. Click on Select disks...

  5. The SSD should not show up in the list of disks if Windows recognizes it as an SSD.

4
  • my SSD shows up there! what should I do? and why should I care..it's still fast
    – vsync
    Jul 1, 2011 at 18:42
  • 1
    @vsync Defragging ruins the disk over time by adding a ton of reads / writes.
    – cutrightjm
    Nov 29, 2012 at 17:26
  • @ekaj if i recall correctly, windows 7 doesn't actually defrag ssd's, but trims them, if it detects correctly that it's an ssd disk. Jan 29, 2014 at 14:23
  • @Ragnagord Ah, okay, that may be the case even if it still calls it "defragging" - one computer I looked at had the default scheduled task for defragging set on an SSD, maybe it was just trimming
    – cutrightjm
    Jan 29, 2014 at 15:48
6

I wrote a command line program to check if TRIM is enabled:

Download & source code

trimcheck

This program provides an easy way to test whether TRIM works on your SSD. It uses a similar method to the one described here, but uses sector calculations to avoid searching the entire drive for the sought pattern. It also pads the sought data with 32MB blocks of dummy data, to give some room to processes which may otherwise overwrite the tested deteled disk area.

The program will set up a test by creating and deleting a file with unique contents, then (on the second run) checks if the data is still accessible at the file's previous location.

enter image description here

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  • 2
    While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid (and downvoted) if the linked page changes. See How To Answer for why it is important. Dec 10, 2012 at 0:20
  • 3
    Uhh.. Do you want me to include the source code? Base64-encoded Windows binary? Sorry, but I just don't see how your canned reply applies to my answer. Dec 10, 2012 at 0:59
  • Since you are referring a software, it may have some documentation that may reveal how the software answers the original question. I guess, it should be sufficient, what do you think? Dec 10, 2012 at 1:07
  • 1
    The source code is open. The algorithm is not exactly trivial. Dec 19, 2012 at 0:27
  • 1
    The SSD Review and TweakTown have published an article about TrimCheck. Hopefully it is better than "getting an email with the attachment YourAnswer.exe" now, Dan Hook ;) Feb 28, 2013 at 23:35
3

Until there're better answers you can use indirect clues from the latest AnandTech article on SSDs: The SSD Improv: Intel & Indilinx get TRIM, Kingston Brings Intel Down to $115:

TRIM won't work on a RAID array.

(Other information previously here about non-MS drivers not supporting TRIM was out of date. For example, Intel added TRIM in March 2010 provided the drive is not in a RAID array: Intel RAID driver adds pass-through TRIM support )

-3

If it sees the drive and you can format it, it recognizes it and is using it correctly. All SSD "features" are handled through the SSD's firmware. Your SSD's manufacturer may have some tools to initiate TRIM on demand such as a "garbage collection" tool.

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  • 2
    TRIM isn't about tools and is a feature, not a "feature". It is supposed to be supported by an OS.
    – Bender
    Nov 2, 2009 at 0:02
  • 1
    He's not entirely wrong, but this question is about Windows 7.
    – JL.
    Oct 27, 2010 at 15:06

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