Sudden increase in IOWait - plots stuck at phase 3

[Harris]

Yes it’s safe and it won’t touch existing data.

By not using continuous TRIM from day one (discard mount), your SSDs have not been operating efficiently, causing unnecessary increased NAND wear and reduced performance.

Also:

Ordered new Plotter Build - $5168 (UPDATED)

Yes, continuous TRIM is generally better for most drives (that can handle it well) as it provides regular information to the drive to perform garbage collection etc. However it can cause performance issues (queue blocking) when it is done synchronously (like with ext4). Best to use XFS TRIM which is asynchronous which should perform better, or Btrfs (with mount option discard=async)