• Using TRIM on spinning rust

    From bob prohaska@3:770/3 to All on Tue Dec 1 18:47:24 2020
    Does anybody have experience/ideas regarding the use of TRIM with
    SMR hard drives? I recently discovered I own one, and would like to
    make the best of a bad (and increasingly unavoidable) situation.

    According to the tests at https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/enabling-trim-on-external-ssd-on-raspber ry-pi
    it appears that trim is supported, but turned off on my (default) RaspiOS installation:

    bob@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo fstrim -v /
    [sudo] password for bob:
    fstrim: /: the discard operation is not supported
    bob@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo lsblk -D
    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
    bob@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo sg_vpd -p bl /dev/sda | grep unmap
    Maximum unmap LBA count: 65535
    Maximum unmap block descriptor count: 8
    Optimal unmap granularity: 0 blocks [not reported]
    bob@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo sg_vpd -p lbpv /dev/sda | grep Unmap
    Unmap command supported (LBPU): 1

    Since SMR hard drives suffer the same convolutions as SSDs during writes,
    it seems useful to employ TRIM. Does anybody know if this is true?

    Thanks for reading,

    bob prohaska

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
  • From druck@3:770/3 to bob prohaska on Wed Dec 2 10:22:52 2020
    On 01/12/2020 18:47, bob prohaska wrote:
    Since SMR hard drives suffer the same convolutions as SSDs during writes,
    it seems useful to employ TRIM. Does anybody know if this is true?

    I've heard WD drives support it, but there's not much in the way of
    evidence for any performance increase.

    ---druck

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)