OCZ first to introduce TRIM for SSD drives

OCZ are working on adding TRIM support to its Vertex drive series and will soon release a firmware update for its Vertex series of SSDs as well as an application to add support for Windows Vista (32 & 64) and XP.

For those unfamiliar with what TRIM is, it is a command the OS instructs to the drive to wipe invalid flash blocks when they are no longer needed.  At present, when the OS deletes a file, only the file allocation table is updated to flag the space formerly used by the file as “unused”.  The problem here is that when this space is later overwritten, the SSD must first erase the blocks before it can write new data to them, which causes write performance to decrease.  With TRIM support by the OS and drive, previously used empty space would no longer need to be erased before being written to.

As Windows Vista and XP do not have support for TRIM, OCZ is also working on an application that will provide support for TRIM in both OS versions.  The application would automatically start and run TRIM on all Vertex drives it finds with the updated firmware.  It can also perform TRIM to all unused space to bring the drive back to its “like new” performance, without affecting the boot time, existing applications or data.  Windows 7 is expected to have built-in support for TRIM once it is officially released.  

OCZ expects to release the new firmware and application once it finishes sorting out a few issues with Windows Vista 64-bit.  Once it perfects the Windows version, OCZ will start working on OSX and Linux support.  While OCZ has not tested Linux yet with this upcoming firmware, Linux running on a kernel with TRIM support may work already fine once the firmware is applied to the drive.

Thanks to Wendy (Dee-27) for letting us know about this news.