SSD trim frequency in Ubuntu

I’m not sure if the same question applies for windows and other linux distros, i am trying to learn trim frequency in Ubuntu when we are dealing with large files like plots.

as far as i understand, trim is not enabled by default in Ubuntu and we enable it with “discard” option while mounting.

After that, trim service runs once a week (default schedule) to trim drives with mounted discard option.

at that point two questions in my mind,

  • What sould be the trim frequency → once a week is enough?

  • Can we run trim service (function) while plotting?

Thanks.

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i watched that video, in the end it refers trimming but i could not catch trim frequency and do it while plotting or not. Maybe i missed. In which minutes in video does he answer my questions or i can watch again :slight_smile:

By default trim is enabled in ubuntu. It’s done once per week which is usually more than enough.
Discard on the other hand does isse a trim command every time a block is freed.
This can but does not have to cause performance issues because the storage is overwritten immediately.
Personally, i would not worry too much about trimming. Modern ssds usually have a hand full of spare blocks availablle and trimming happens there in the background

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In the video (at the end) he suggests turning the discard option on. Ubuntu doesn’t default discard to on - instead it defaults to a systemd timer that runs TRIM once a week. You can turn discard on for the filesystem in your fstab (and then disable the now-redundant systemd timer).

Another option would be to tweak the systemd timer to run fstrim more requently. On 20.04 (and probably other versions), you’ll want to edit /lib/systemd/system/fstrim.timer, changing OnCalendar=weekly => OnCalendar=daily (or hourly). Then run sudo systemctl daemon-reload to reload the systemd config.

I haven’t noticed any issues with TRIM running (either via discard being turned on, nor by having run frequently via the timer) while plotting is happening.

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Thank you for that summary!

As an aside, I dislike the way people post videos as “answers”… at least pull the key info out in a text reply in addition to the video because we can read 100x faster than we can watch and process a video…

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I agree 100%. As a long-time software developer, the trend towards video tutorials for what used to be written blog content is a huge pet peeve of mine. I know lots of people prefer technical content in video form, but I think they’re insane masochists.

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thank you for the summary!

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This is where I pull out the why-not-both-girl.gif … you can do both video and a text summary. That way everyone gets what they need.

Annnnnnnnd I can continue to ignore the video entirely and process the text at 100x the speed :wink:

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