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Dear Aunt TUAW: Can I use a third-party SSD with Lion?

by Erica Sadun Aug 1st 2011 at 4:00PM

Dear Aunt TUAW,

Is there any (un)official word from Apple regarding the support for 3rd party SSD HDDs with Lion? I desire to tweak my MBP but do not wish to be without garbage collection and TRIM. What advice have you? Should I hold off on acquiring an SSD?

Warm regards,

Need4Speed

Dear N4S,

Auntie is using a 3rd party SSD without any troubles. She downloaded a TRIM enabler from groths.org after reading that the Snow Lion enabler seemed to work under Lion as well.

So far, everything seems be running well.

Hugs,

Auntie T.



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Dear Aunt TUAW, Is there any (un)official word from Apple regarding the support for 3rd party SSD HDDs with Lion? I desire to tweak my...
 

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13 Comments

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bpawlak

Don't use Trim enabler!

I have an Intel 320 600GB SSD drive and started getting CoreData related exceptions and kernel panics.
Since I've came back to the backed up kernel module, everything came back to normal.
Guess we have to wait for "true" TRIM support from Apple.

August 03 2011 at 2:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kamal Syed

I have an early 2011 17" Macbook Pro. I also have a SATA3 Crucial C300 -256GB with the latest FW7. The Crucial SSD worked beautifully in my early 2008 15" MBP (SATA2?), but it is giving me big problems in my 17" 2011MBP.

Apple refuses to acknowledge the problem, though its all over the web. It seems that all SATA3 SSDs are having problems. Its a bit better with Lion vs Snow Leopard, but I still get data corruption, and LONG "freezes" (I just don't see the beachball anymore). I can sort of live with the pauses, but the data corruption really sucks, as its generally undetectable.

I've tried some of the workarounds, but it seems the problem is "fixed" in the newer machines post-April (mine is from Feb).

MKS

August 02 2011 at 3:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Aargh-a-Knot

OWC has posted a good read on why you don't want or need TRIM support on SSDs with Sandforce controllers...

http://blog.macsales.com/11051-to-trim-or-not-to-trim-owc-has-the-answer

I guess you should take it with a grain of salt, as they are promoting their own product line, but I think it sounded reasonable enough.

August 02 2011 at 8:12 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alex Flores

"Don't use TRIM Enabler, it's bad software! It replaces a Lion kernel extension with one from 10.6.8! You should revert the change ASAP. Using an older extension is only going to cause problems and conflicts with dependent extensions."
http://gdgt.com/question/in-os-x-lion-how-do-you-enable-trim-support-for-ssds-f16/#post-id-119522

August 01 2011 at 11:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Matt Freedman

See what DigLloyd says about TRIM...
http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MacBookProFeb2011-TRIM.html

August 01 2011 at 11:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Robert L.

Buy an OWC drive and you don't need (or want) TRIM. I just bought a Macbook Pro with Lion and cloned it to my new OWC SSD. It screams!

August 01 2011 at 10:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kaphéin

Snow Lion?

August 01 2011 at 6:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kaphéin

Snow Lion ???

August 01 2011 at 6:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
lecube

If you use an SSD with a sandforce controller (especially the newest 2000 series) you don't need, nor should you enable in anyway TRIM support. The new controller does the background cleanup for you. So go get yourself a new SSD with a super fast SF controller and have fun!! TRIM is not a long-term function anyway. The OS should not be performing this kind of disk cleanup in the first place.

August 01 2011 at 6:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to lecube's comment
kbotc

The sandforce chips know HFS+? The old chips only did cleanup on NTFS, and I can't picture them expanding. The drive has to be aware of the filesystem in order to do the garbage collection, otherwise TRIM is still required (The drive doesn't know what is dead data and what isn't. I want a drive that supports the SCSI command set though.)

August 01 2011 at 8:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to kbotc's comment
Nick Kay

According to Anand, he *thinks* that the Apple SSDs (both samsung and toshiba) run custom firmware on them that do HFS+ trimming -- which is why most mac users who get the apple OEM ssds never seem to have any complaints after months and even years of use with the same drive. I don't think there's any way to verify this though.

I just bought a 2011 i7 11" mb air and I really want to get a 6gb drive for it -- the cost of the damn thing was almost 1500$, and the intel chipset they're using supports a 6gb link -- you would think that apple would include a 6gb drive; but no. I'm lucky though -- I got the samsung ssd in mine; I feel bad for people that paid MORE for the 13" model and got the crappy ass toshiba SSD. I've heard a lot of people are returning their airs due to this as well.

A company having multiple suppliers for different parts is fine; avoids supply problems, especially with NAND! But the parts need to be of equal quality \ strength...and benchmarks have shown that they're not...it's the same thing with the iPad 2's LG vs Samsung display -- they're clearly different from each other -- and which one you get when you open that box is a complete crap shoot...It really sucks to buy something and not know what you're getting -- especially when you're paying 500$+, or in the case of the mb air, 1000$+

August 02 2011 at 8:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down
Daniel Premo

Snow Leopard, not Snow Lion
*corrections

August 01 2011 at 4:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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