Will Karmic Koala automatically have trim in effect ...

[nhasian]

one of the reasons for me waiting to get an SSD drive (besides the price drop this Q4) is for ATA-TRIM to be ready out of the box. Hoping to see that by the time Karmic is launched. I know its in the kernel but wether or not its enabled by default is a different story. How can someone with an SSD drive check to see if ata-trim is enabled?

[josephellengar]

one of the reasons for me waiting to get an SSD drive (besides the price drop this Q4) is for ATA-TRIM to be ready out of the box. Hoping to see that by the time Karmic is launched. I know its in the kernel but wether or not its enabled by default is a different story. How can someone with an SSD drive check to see if ata-trim is enabled?

Yeah, that's exactly what I want to know. That's why I started this thread.

[hugmenot]

I have a Samsung OEM SSD in my X301 Thinkpad. Now, after reading this section of the later Anandtech article I got fairly upset.
No TRIM for me in any case I guess ...

But then I found the brutish, terrifying method. And I think I’m gonna try it tomorrow:

http://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase

[Paqman]

According to Theodore Tso, the guy behind ext4:

Ext4 has support for the ATA TRIM command, which allows filesystems to inform SSD’s that blocks have been deleted and do not need to be taken into account by the SSD’s garbage collection and wear-leveling algorithms. Unfortunately the ATA TRIM command hasn’t been finalized yet, and so (as of today) there are no drives, including Intel’s SSD’s that actually support the ATA TRIM command; and for this reason Linux’s block device layer does not currently issue the ATA TRIM command, since there haven’t been any devices to test the command. So at the moment, ext4 informs the block layer that blocks that belong to deleted files can be discard, so once TRIM-capable SSD’s become available, and the Linux block layer actually sends the TRIM command to the hard drives, everything will be all set to go.

Source

[josephellengar]

According to Theodore Tso, the guy behind ext4:


Source

The gen 1 drives did not have support, but the gen 2 drives do.

[Paqman]

The gen 1 drives did not have support, but the gen 2 drives do.

Fair enough. That article is 6 months old, which in SSD years is a looong time.

(SSD-years being a bit like dog years, see.)

[hugmenot]

Fair enough. That article is 6 months old, which in SSD years is a looong time.

(SSD-years being a bit like dog years, see.)

In the month-old Anandtech article I linked he says that all controller manufacturers announced TRIM support by end of the year. It’s not there yet. And if you can’t update the firmware this is all moot anyway.

[josephellengar]

In the month-old Anandtech article I linked he says that all controller manufacturers announced TRIM support by end of the year. It’s not there yet. And if you can’t update the firmware this is all moot anyway.

But he also says that a number of drives do have support, notably the indilinx drives. And the intel g2 drives have complete support, so IMO koala should implement OS level support.

[hugmenot]

But he also says that a number of drives do have support, notably the indilinx drives. And the intel g2 drives have complete support, so IMO koala should implement OS level support.

Maybe you’re right. I was under the impression that the Indilinx version of TRIM was not the finalized ATA version, which is why he had to use this wiper tool. But I only read diagonally to find what I was after.

Anyhow, I doubt it will be enabled, even if possible. It’s too close to release for something scary like this to be enabled. Ext4 is new, trim is new, no testing possible. It would make for a magnificent desaster if a bug makes it into release. Don’t trash user data must be a maxim that trumps all performance concerns.

[josephellengar]

Maybe your right. I was under the impression that the Indilinx version of TRIM was not the finalized ATA version, which is why he had to use this wiper tool. But I only read diagonally to find what I was after.

I think so. But I'm sure that g2 drives fully support it. That was one of the reasons why they only really had to update the controller to get g2, rather than the actual memory chips.