Solid State Drive¶

Usage¶

TRIM¶

What Is TRIM¶

The TRIM command informs the SSD which blocks are to be considered not in use (e.g. deleted files) and to perform garbage collection in the background. This will improve the endurance and performance of the drive.

Most solid state drives (SSDs) now support TRIM command.

The Linux kernel added TRIM support in v3.8. Ensure the desired file system/RAID being used supports TRIM.

Warning

Data loss may occur if drive does not support TRIM.

Verify TRIM Support¶

Choose one of the following methods to verify for TRIM support.

List block devices (lsblk).

$ lsblk --discard

NAME   DISC-ALN DISC-GRAN DISC-MAX DISC-ZERO
sda           0        0B       0B         0
├─sda1        0        0B       0B         0
├─sda2        0        0B       0B         0
├─sda3        0        0B       0B         0
└─sda4        0        0B       0B         0
sdb           0      512B       2G         0
├─sdb1        0      512B       2G         0
└─sdb2        0      512B       2G         0
sdc           0      512B       2G         0
sdd           0        0B       0B         0
sr0           0        0B       0B         0

Note

Ensure the values of DISC-GRAN (discard granularity) and DISC-MAX (discard max bytes) columns have a non-zero value (TRIM support).

Get device parameters (hdparam).
```
# hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep TRIM
```
```
*    Data Set Management TRIM supported (limit 8 block)
```
Note

The output may vary depending on the different types of TRIM support. See Wikipedia:TRIM#ATA for more information.

Automate Periodic TRIM¶

Arch Linux¶

Install Arch Linux package to get "fstrim.service" and "fstrim.timer".
```
# pacman -Sy util-linux
```
Enable fstrim timer.
```
# systemctl enable fstrim.timer
```
Note

By default TRIM is run weekly.

Note

Refer to "journalctl" to see the units activity and status.