TRIM enabled for Plugable TBT3-NVME1TB Thunderbolt™ 3 1TB NVMe Solid State Drive

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I’m using the TBT3-NVME1TB as an external system drive for my iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017) with Catalina. I have read that Mac OS X does not by default enable TRIM for SSDs. Should I do anything to enable TRIM on the drive, or does the Plugable drive handle that itself?

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Hello,

Thank you for contacting Plugable support! I’d be more than happy to assist you.

To my knowledge, macOS only enables TRIM for the onboard SSD drive that the OS is installed on. For enabling TRIM for any third party SSD you’ll need to use a third party utility or perform some terminal commands.

Apple added a command called trimforce in Mac OS X 10.10.4 and up that allows Mac owners using third-party SSDs to enable TRIM.

  1. Open the Terminal from /Applications/Utilities.
  2. Type sudo trimforce enable and hit enter.
  3. Carefully read the important notice and if you still wish to proceed, hit Y.
  4. If you would like to disable TRIM, you can use the command sudo trimforce disable.

You can certainly enable TRIM on our drive, it should work without issue. Our SSD does not have any automatic self TRIM capabilities.

Please don’t hesitate to let us know of other questions.

Thanks again for contacting Plugable support and best wishes!

Joshua Henry

Senior Engineer | Product Owner
Plugable Technologies

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Hi Joshua,

Thank you for your very helpful and clear answer. Since you are an expert, may I ask a supplementary question? Would you advise that it is a good idea to enable TRIM on the SSD?

The scary warning notice says “This tool force-enables TRIM for all relevant attached devices, even though such devices may not have been validated for data integrity while using TRIM. Use of this tool to enable TRIM may result in unintended data loss or data corruption.”, but I assume from your answer that I am unlikely to suffer data loss (the drive is backed up with Time Machine, so even if there is, it won’t be catastrophic).

So my question is, is there an advantage in enabling TRIM on the drive?

thanks!

Nigel

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We’ve had various customers go through this process, and we’ve done some testing on our own. So far there’s been no incidents to speak of, so you’re probably fine proceeding.

The use of TRIM can improve the performance of writing data to SSDs and contribute to longer SSD life, so there are definitely some advantages to having it enabled.

Thanks!
Josh

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