Crucial BX100 SSD compatibility

Has anybody installed a Crucial BX100 SSD in a late 2009 iMac 27 in 10,1 without any issues, including achieving the correct SATAII negotiated link speed? I understand the BX 100 has a different controller to earlier SSDs and am concerned about compatibility.

According to the Crucial site it is compatible. Here is a link to their site with your iMac selected for SSD compatibility.

Computer memory and SSD upgrades for Apple iMac Systems iMac (21.5 and 27-inch, Late 2009) from Crucial

Lisa

The controller is not part of the equation and is only for internal operations of the SSD. At the port, the data is standard SATA. As SATA is forwards and backwards compatible, SATA I/II/III computers can interface with SATA I/II/III drives in any combination (tho at the slowest speed available among them).

Also consider OWC SSD's which do not require TRIM operations as they have thir very own garbage collection system. TRIM is not compatible with Yomsemite OS X.10 as Apple have changed the security KEXT. In order to change the hard drive in an iMac take it you are pretty experienced knocking them apart and re-installing?


http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_6G/

it's at least a 2009 if it was one of the newer ones with the hard drive sensor built into the hard drive no ssd at all for you

TRIM is not compatible with Yomsemite OS X.10 as Apple have changed the security KEXT.

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Not exactly, Harry! TRIM is compatible, but not available for third party SSDs. And the KEXT security change prevents the installation of third party TRIM functions unless one is willing to disable the security and take the risk of getting into an awkward situation when any Apple update resets the KEXT security.

The net effect is the same--third party SSDs cannot easily have TRIM. And I fully agree with your suggestion to get OWC drives with their own internal cleanup function.

TRIM will only work with drives that come pre-installed with your new Mac. Cindori have issued the following advice:-


https://www.cindori.org/trim-enabler-and-yosemite/

Yep, that's basically what I said. Cindori's product Trim Enabler, worked on Mavericks, but when Apple changed kext security to get Trim Enabler running you need to disable kext security. And when Apple updates the OS, it apparently resets kext security, which means on the next boot you get locked up when kext security blocks the start of Trim Enabler. Apple is unlikely to relent on kext security, so Cindori is in a tough spot.

TRIM as a function does work, but only with the Apple-installed drives. That's not by TRIM design, it's an Apple decision not to support TRIM on any third party or after-market SSDs. I don't know if an Apple replacement, or an exact equivalent replacement drive will be TRIMmed, but I would expect Apple to preserve the function if they swap out the drive. Maybe that's why they have started making it harder and harder to do third party hardware upgrades; there isn't much you can really do to modify the new machines.

I feel like you guys are implying that (modifiable) Macs that run Yosemite cannot use any third-party SSDs other than OWC's, and that's simply incorrect. Much as I love OWC and their SSD offerings, you can absolutely pop in a (for example) Samsung 850 EVO or a Crucial BX100 into a Mac running Yosemite.

I understand how this impression was formed (even Chris Breen had to be corrected on it; see the comments from this column -- Mac won't boot? Yosemite disabled TRIM for third-party SSDs), but the only warnings about third-party SSDs and Yosemite-running Macs should be not to buy the no-name brands that may require TRIM support in the hardware in order to work; all the major-brand names I can find say their products work fine with Macs running Yosemite right out of the box.

chas_m, did you read Chris Breen's article? He supported what Harry and i said, that Apple does not support TRIM for after-market SSDs, that Trim Enabler from Cindori was a solution to that until Yosemite, when Apple invoked kext signing and killed Trim Enabler. So his suggestion, and what Harry and I have been saying, is that if you want to put in an SSD, get one with a garbage collection process built in, preferable the GC in the SandForce processor. It happens that OWC drives use SandForce. So do Samsung, at least in some SSDs.

And in the comments, nobody "corrected" Breen, they just added more drive manufacturers to the list that are using SandForce or claim garbage collection is built in. Nobody found any error in Breen's article that I could find.

Just about any and every drive will work fine with Yosemite. But any drive that doesn't have internal garbage collection will eventually slow down. Might not be many out there in that category, but it's a fair warning to a novice looking to upgrade his system.

MacInWin said:

chas_m, did you read Chris Breen's article?

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Well of course I did, but I appear to be the only one. Breen's article clearly states that all third party SSDs (except OWC's) don't work in Yosemite because it doesn't support TRIM. Commenters correctly informed him that no, that's not true -- every major brand of third-party SSD works fine, because they all use their own form of garbage collection. This directly contradicts Breen's claim, and amends it with updated and corrected information.

How you can see that as not "a correction" is beyond me.

S.SubZero said:

The controller is not part of the equation and is only for internal operations of the SSD. At the port, the data is standard SATA. As SATA is forwards and backwards compatible, SATA I/II/III computers can interface with SATA I/II/III drives in any combination (tho at the slowest speed available among them).

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While the spec states this is the case, it is not always true. A prime example is the SATA II head in optical bays on some Macbook Pros. The drives are recognized, but in my experience have I/O errors sufficient to halt usability of the device. All because that train-down, was not properly achieved by the controller used on the board.

harryb2448 said:

Also consider OWC SSD's which do not require TRIM operations as they have thir very own garbage collection system. TRIM is not compatible with Yomsemite OS X.10 as Apple have changed the security KEXT. In order to change the hard drive in an iMac take it you are pretty experienced knocking them apart and re-installing?


Mercury 6G Solid State Drives 2.5" Serial-ATA 9.5mm 6Gb/s

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Just to clear some misinformation...

No ssd requires TRIM to work. Trim is just a command, that tells the SSDs controller, that certain data is invalid (ie, you deleted a file). Without trim, ssds has no way of knowing which data is valid and which is not right up to a point, when you try to write to a sector, which had previously deleted data.

As for garbage collection; EVERY SSD has it. SSDs simply cannot function without it.

It just happens, that OWC uses sandforce, which relies heavily on compression and give little importance to trim command it receives. Because Sandforce drives can accumulate additional space for overprovisiong via compression, they can sustain optimal write performance longer, because it has more fresh block, that can be written to immediatly.

S.SubZero said:

The controller is not part of the equation and is only for internal operations of the SSD. At the port, the data is standard SATA. As SATA is forwards and backwards compatible, SATA I/II/III computers can interface with SATA I/II/III drives in any combination (tho at the slowest speed available among them).

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If only that was the case. Some ssds can be very clunky when it comes to support.

For example sandforce sf1200 based drives dont work on haswell and newer system due to incomplete sata implementation...

hojnikb said:

Just to clear some misinformation...

No ssd requires TRIM to work. Trim is just a command, that tells the SSDs controller, that certain data is invalid (ie, you deleted a file). Without trim, ssds has no way of knowing which data is valid and which is not right up to a point, when you try to write to a sector, which had previously deleted data.

As for garbage collection; EVERY SSD has it. SSDs simply cannot function without it.

It just happens, that OWC uses sandforce, which relies heavily on compression and give little importance to trim command it receives. Because Sandforce drives can accumulate additional space for overprovisiong via compression, they can sustain optimal write performance longer, because it has more fresh block, that can be written to immediatly.

Click to expand...

To clear up some misinformation...

This article (link) describes how TRIM works and why TRIM is useful, even with a SandForce controller in the SSD. It is NOT that the SSD doesn't know that the data is no longer needed, it's that the SSD needs to know to move the valid pages out of a block that is partially free to free up the entire block for release as available. As for garbage collection, that's a slightly different process and while it is universally implemented, the algorithms for GC vary in effectiveness and efficiency.

Bottom line, while you CAN use an SSD without TRIM, eventually it will slow down because of the way pages and blocks are managed. TRIM will prevent that slowdown by managing the pages and blocks to "defragment" the SSD.

MacInWin said:

To clear up some misinformation...

This article (link) describes how TRIM works and why TRIM is useful, even with a SandForce controller in the SSD. It is NOT that the SSD doesn't know that the data is no longer needed, it's that the SSD needs to know to move the valid pages out of a block that is partially free to free up the entire block for release as available. As for garbage collection, that's a slightly different process and while it is universally implemented, the algorithms for GC vary in effectiveness and efficiency.

Bottom line, while you CAN use an SSD without TRIM, eventually it will slow down because of the way pages and blocks are managed. TRIM will prevent that slowdown by managing the pages and blocks to "defragment" the SSD.

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Fortunally, only write speeds are affected by lack of trim and most of the time if SSD isn't a complete turd, it isn't all that noticable (well, unless you move large data around).

Before this thread dies completely regarding Apple and it's lack of proper TRIM support for third party SSDs until their El Capitan version arrives, it seems that OWC is not tho only suppler with some of their SSD drives:
OS X El Capitan Opens Door to TRIM Support on Third-Party SSDs for Improved Performance - Mac Rumors
With An OWC SSD, There’s No Need For TRIM | Other World Computing Blog
Search Results for mercury ssd at MacSales.com

but also anglebird.com has been producing self supporting TRIM SSDs since about 2012 as well that I just recently discovered:
First Third-Party SSD With Native OS X TRIM Support Launched by Angelbird - Mac Rumors
Third-party SSD vendors address Apple TRIM issue
Angelbird | SSD wrk for Mac | Office SSD for Mac

I just thought it's nice to know there are optional suppliers out there other than OWC who seems to always get the plug for some reason.

And for some extra info with a rather interesting comment, Posted: Nov 17, 2014:
"After the news was released we were contacted by several third-party SSD vendors about the impact of removing TRIM functionality. From our conversations it was revealed that only one manufacturer currently has native TRIM support for Apple products. Angelbird has supported native Apple TRIM support for two years, and the Angelbird wrk for Mac is the only SSD right now that circumvents the issue."
Third-party SSD vendors address Apple TRIM issue

Don't like that Angelbird masquerading as Apple SSD's which as the article states is questionable.

harryb2448 said:

Don't like that Angelbird masquerading as Apple SSD's which as the article states is questionable.

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Personally I don't give a **** what they or any other third party drive maker does seeing that Apple is being so arrogant to support what should be a universal standard, if such a thing can ever exist.

Gheese, they're even so arrogant they even use propriety HDDs with their unique connectors for my iMac and many other user's.

Anyway, I see we can actually purchase the Angelbird SSDs via NCIX.com in this area and are sometimes cheaper than OWC's TRIM supported drives.

PS: I'm not sure how OWC does the Apple TRIM "support" either... yet!! ;D

pm-r said:

PS: I'm not sure how OWC does the Apple TRIM "support" either... yet!!

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OWC isn't "doing" anything. They just sell SSDs with the SandForce controller. That controller does the garbage collection internally that TRIM triggers. The article I linked in post #14 has it at the end of the third page and discusses how TRIM and SandForce work together. But in the long run SandForce GC is sufficient to prevent SSD writes from slowing down over time.