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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?
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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?
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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.
3-1 I receive a 0 despite not even having a SSD. It’s amazing how many people blindly upvote without first checking themselves. – kinokijuf – 2014-10-18T14:30:47.947
There is a duplicate question with a better answer here: https://superuser.com/a/1088697/195088
The answer given by i3v is probably the best answer, though it doesn't have the votes for it.
6Does 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 – 2012-01-18T22:24:22.070
7Unfortunately 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 – 2009-11-02T17:13:08.143
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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:
Right click on a disk drive, go to properties.
Select the Tools tab and click on Defragment now...
Click on Configure schedule...
Click on Select disks...
The SSD should not show up in the list of disks if Windows recognizes it as an SSD.
my SSD shows up there! what should I do? and why should I care..it's still fast – vsync – 2011-07-01T18:42:14.053
1@vsync Defragging ruins the disk over time by adding a ton of reads / writes. – cutrightjm – 2012-11-29T17:26:54.180
@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. – CJStuart – 2014-01-29T14:23:48.710
@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 – 2014-01-29T15:48:04.767
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I wrote a command line program to check if TRIM is enabled:
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.
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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.
– bytebuster – 2012-12-10T00:20:43.7203Uhh.. 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. – Vladimir Panteleev – 2012-12-10T00:59:54.600
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? – bytebuster – 2012-12-10T01:07:22.110
Nope, sorry, still not getting it. The relevant part is the first line. Everything else is implementation detail that is not interesting to the average user. No reading beyond this answer is required to operate the program. – Vladimir Panteleev – 2012-12-10T01:09:46.053
This is only slightly better than getting an email with the attachment YourAnswer.exe – Dan Hook – 2012-12-18T15:05:40.707
1The source code is open. The algorithm is not exactly trivial. – Vladimir Panteleev – 2012-12-19T00:27:39.027
1The 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 ;) – Vladimir Panteleev – 2013-02-28T23:35:26.717
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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 )
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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.
1He's not entirely wrong, but this question is about Windows 7. – JL. – 2010-10-27T15:06:50.147
2TRIM isn't about tools and is a feature, not a "feature". It is supposed to be supported by an OS. – Bender – 2009-11-02T00:02:40.297
1Which SSD and firmware are you using? – Sim – 2009-11-01T23:16:12.870
Crucial 128GB M225 firmware version 1819 – Dan Hook – 2009-11-02T02:48:38.077