If you want your SSD to stay in peak condition without leaving even a smidge of performance on the table, I'd like to acquaint you with the TRIM command. TRIM not only keeps your SSD running at its best, but also reduces unnecessary operations that can, over time, negatively impact its lifespan.
TRIM is a very simple concept
Hey SSD, that data is marked for deletion
Data is constantly being written and deleted on a regular SSD. Windows creates and deletes temp files , various programs do the same, and you also manually delete downloaded files, games you had installed, and files you created, such as Word documents. In a nutshell, every PC is a proper file-creating-and-deleting factory.
That data may be deleted at the software level, but the physical blocks on the SSD can still contain it. The thing is, you can't simply overwrite data on an SSD like you can on a hard drive. Instead, the SSD has to read a "block" of data (made up of smaller "pages"), move any valid data elsewhere—or delete it—and then write new data to a clean block.
Ideally, the SSD could just erase the unnecessary data and write new data in its place, avoiding all that extra movement. But the catch is that, without additional instructions, the SSD controller doesn't know which data is no longer needed, so it treats it as valid and moves it around anyway.
This becomes a problem when the SSD is nearly full . Moving data around takes time, and all those extra read and write operations can noticeably slow things down. Not only that, but unnecessary operations on data that's no longer needed can also reduce the drive's endurance.
This is where the TRIM command comes in. It lets the operating system inform the SSD which blocks of data are no longer in use, so the memory controller can properly clean them up during a process called garbage collection. Instead of moving around stale data, which leads to unnecessary read and write operations, the SSD can mark it as invalid in advance and erase it during garbage collection.
In short, TRIM has multiple benefits. It helps the SSD manage space more efficiently, reduces unnecessary read and write operations, lowers write amplification (extra work caused by moving data that should've already been deleted), improves performance , and extends the drive's lifespan . It's a super useful command that works in the background to keep your SSD healthy and performant.
How to check whether TRIM is enabled on your PC
And how to tweak your PC's TRIM schedule
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Windows PCs should have TRIM enabled by default on all SSDs, a feature Windows has supported since Windows 7. However, TRIM can be disabled under specific circumstances.
For instance, if you had purchased a new SSD and cloned your old one to it , the OS could get confused and fail to enable TRIM on the new drive. Similarly, upgrading from an older version of Windows while keeping your files and settings can lead to the same issue, as can restoring your OS from an old system image. In other words, there's a slim chance that TRIM is disabled on your machine.
Since we want TRIM to be enabled on every SSD, you should check whether it's enabled on your drives. To do this, open the Windows Command Prompt by opening the Start menu, typing "command," right-clicking it, and selecting Run as administrator.
Once you open it, type the following command and press Enter:
fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotifyThe resulting value should be 0, indicating that TRIM is enabled on your PC. If you see 1, it means TRIM is disabled for some reason.
To enable it, type the following in the Command Prompt and press Enter:
fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0Aside from enabling or disabling TRIM, you can also adjust the schedule for when your OS optimizes your SSDs using the TRIM command. By default, the OS sends the TRIM command to the SSD controller once a week, but you can change this in just a few clicks.
Either open the Start menu or simply type "defragment" in the Windows search box. Next, open the "Defragment and Optimize Drives" utility once it appears.
Once you're in the app, click on the "Change settings" button. From there, you can adjust the TRIM frequency to weekly, daily, or monthly. It's recommended to keep it on a weekly schedule, but you can switch to daily if you have a drive that's always chock-full, and you constantly write and delete data on it. You can also manually run the TRIM command by selecting a drive and clicking the "Optimize" button.
The important thing is having TRIM enabled in the first place
Whatever you end up doing, just make sure that TRIM is enabled in the first place. While you shouldn't notice its impact if everything is working as it should, it's a very important command that does the heavy lifting behind the scenes, improving your SSD's longevity and keeping it performing at its best, especially as the drive fills up.
