TRIM and other maintenance tips for SSDs

[Roland]

Please don't test it if you have important files on the NTFS partition. I don't know if the bug still exists.

If you want to test it then use a new NTFS test partition.

Ok, thanks for warning...

But for me it would be more important to get fstrim to work with NTFS-3G, as I want to run trim only periodically. I tried to mount the ntfs parttion using the 'ntfs-3d' command to be sure that 3g is really in use and not the legacy one, but that did not change anything. Do you have idea why it is not working...?

[xeno74]

Hi Roland,

I would like to say thank you because of your hint with TRIM. This topic is very important for SSDs.
I checked my Void PPC today because it is installed on an SSD.
Unfortunately, TRIM is not activated automatically if Void runs on an SSD. I tested fstrim manually today and it works.
I installed cronie and created a cron job for fstrim.

Screenshot with further information:



Thanks for the hint.

Christian

[xeno74]

For MintPPC, Fienix and Debian: To schedule a weekly TRIM of all attached capable drives, enable the .timer unit.

systemctl enable --now fstrim.timer

Output:

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Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/timers.target.wants/fstrim.timer → /lib/systemd/system/fstrim.timer.

systemctl status fstrim.timer

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systemctl status fstrim.timer
● fstrim.timer - Discard unused blocks once a week
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/fstrim.timer; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (waiting) since Tue 2023-04-18 11:02:01 CEST; 23s ago
    Trigger: Mon 2023-04-24 01:08:03 CEST; 5 days left
   Triggers: ● fstrim.service
       Docs: man:fstrim

Apr 18 11:02:01 mintppc.a-eon.tld systemd[1]: Started Discard unused blocks once a week.

systemctl status fstrim.service

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● fstrim.service - Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/fstrim.service; static)
     Active: inactive (dead)
       Docs: man:fstrim(8)

Apr 18 10:41:10 mintppc.a-eon.tld systemd[1]: Starting Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab...
Apr 18 10:42:40 mintppc.a-eon.tld fstrim[5526]: /: 235.2 GiB (252553142272 bytes) trimmed on /dev/sda3
Apr 18 10:42:40 mintppc.a-eon.tld systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Succeeded.
Apr 18 10:42:40 mintppc.a-eon.tld systemd[1]: Finished Discard unused blocks on filesystems from /etc/fstab.
Apr 18 10:42:40 mintppc.a-eon.tld systemd[1]: fstrim.service: Consumed 1.075s CPU time.

[Roland]

For MintPPC, Fienix and Debian: To schedule a weekly TRIM of all attached capable drives, enable the .timer unit.

systemctl enable --now fstrim.timer

Thank you for sharing this info! If you want to run fstrim monthly instead of weekly, is it enough to simply replace the paramter "Weekly" with "Monthly" in the "fstrim.timer" file?

I think this thread could be used to share all kind of tips for 'helthcare' of SSDs, in addition to TRIM. So, I slightly modified the title of this thread to better fullfill that task .

[Roland]

Thank you! I tested fstrim with Fienix6, and it seems to work with EXT4 partitions, but with NTFS I got this error:

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~$ sudo fstrim -v /media/roland/NTFS-disk   
fstrim: /media/roland/NTFS-disk: the discard operation is not supported

Iny idea how to get it to work with NTFS? I read from different sources that NTFS-3G should nowadays work with TRIM.

I got finally 'fstrim' to work also with ntfs partitions! The trick was to mount them in fstab, using 'ntfs-3g' parameter instead of 'ntfs' or 'ntfs3':

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LABEL=TUX    /media/TUX   ntfs-3g	  rw,user,nofail,noatime,exec,uid=1001	0	2

But the question remains: why ntfs partitions mounted simply by accessing then from caja cannot be trimmed? Is there some way to set 'ntfs-3g' the system default when mounting partitions? BTW, EXT4 partitions mounted from caja do work with fstrim.

[xeno74]

I got finally 'fstrim' to work also with ntfs partitions! The trick was to mount them in fstab, using 'ntfs-3g' parameter instead of 'ntfs' or 'ntfs3':

Code: Select all

LABEL=TUX    /media/TUX   ntfs-3g	  rw,user,nofail,noatime,exec,uid=1001	0	2

But the question remains: why ntfs partitions mounted simply by accessing then from caja cannot be trimmed? Is there some way to set 'ntfs-3g' the system default when mounting partitions? BTW, EXT4 partitions mounted from caja do work with fstrim.

Hi Roland,

Well done! Great idea with the ntfs-3g in the fstab.

Unfortunately, I don't use NTFS mounts and I don't need them so I don't have any idea about a solution but I hope you can find a solution.

Cheers,
Christian