Samsung 850 Pro ssd- how to start garbage collection/TRIM

MUGEN02 · 23 Jul 2015

Hello

I have a samsung 850 Pro SSD and would like to know how to clean the drive with garbage collection/TRIM. Do I let the PC idle or something?

Things I should mention:
-PC is set to AHCI and I only have one drive attached to it.
-Trim is enabled
-I have over provisioning set to 10% of drive using samsung magician.
-Disk defragmenter shows the drive is 33% fragmented. I've never defraged the SSD and have defragmentation schedule turned off.

Thanks

Ranger4 · 23 Jul 2015

It sounds like you have everything set up correctly. There is no need to do anything about garbage collection, in fact I don't think you can do anything, the SSD does that itself.

Disregard what Disc Defragmenter says & don't defrag a SSD.

I have a Samsung 840 Pro & I use the Samsung Magician software as well & it has been in use for over 12 months now without any problems.

So just enjoy your SSD & let it look after itself .

MUGEN02 · 23 Jul 2015

If I wanted to help or speed up the process of cleaning the drive what is the best way to do that? Leave it idle at the log in screen from a cold start or let it sit at the desktop overnight?

I contacted samsung and was told "You do not need to do anything but keep your recycling bin empty." which I do

Mellon Head · 23 Jul 2015

Then you should follow Samsung's advice and not worry about it. :)

essenbe · 23 Jul 2015

If you are just looking to be sure trim is working, open an elevated command prompt (click start, type cmd in the search box, right click the cmd entry that appears and select run as administrator) copy/paste this into the box that appears
fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

If the response is DisableDeleteNotify = 1 (Windows TRIM commands are disabled)
If the response is DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (Windows TRIM commands are enabled)

That's all you need to do. Just let the SSD and the OS do their job. I have 8 or 9 Samsungs and I do very little to them other than turn Defrag to Manual and disable Hibernate. I have some back to the Samsung 830 which are still in operation and still run as well as the day they were new. Don't do what many people do and try to tweak them to death. You can tweak them so much the quit working right. Just let then do their thing and enjoy them.

GokAy · 24 Jul 2015

fsutil is nice and all but doesn't let you know if TRIM is actually working :)
Get trimcheck 0.7 - Index of /trimcheck and follow its instructions to make sure trim is working.

System Restore defrags the SSDs once a month with a Scheduled Task (The real and complete story - Does Windows defragment your SSD? - Scott Hanselman). But SSD is supposed to be fragmented due to Wear Leveling feature.

Garbage Collection will work even if you only power up the SSD with just the power cable attached.

essenbe · 24 Jul 2015

fsutil tells you the OS is passing the trim command to the SSD Controller. Unless the controller is defective, it does trim immediately. If you believe the controller is defective, you should RMA the SSD anyway.

GokAy · 24 Jul 2015

essenbe said:

fsutil tells you the OS is passing the trim command to the SSD Controller. Unless the controller is defective, it does trim immediately. If you believe the controller is defective, you should RMA the SSD anyway.

Thanks Steve, extra bit of info I didn't know before. I always thought it just reported whether trim is enabled or not. However, seems trimcheck is still a good idea to kill 2 birds at once as it tests a bit further.