TRIM
A command that tells an SSD which logical blocks are unused so the device can erase or prepare flash pages in advance.
TRIM is the ATA Data Set Management hint that named LBA ranges are no longer in use; NVMe’s counterpart is Dataset Management with the Deallocate attribute; Linux surfaces both as discard. After deletes or filesystem frees, the OS notifies the SSD so garbage collection need not copy invalidated pages, reducing write amplification and helping steady-state performance. TRIM/discard is not by itself a cryptographic erase or secure wipe of residual data. Behavior depends on filesystem mount options, RAID layers (many hardware RAID controllers historically blocked TRIM), and whether the device honors queued vs non-queued TRIM. Enable discard where the stack supports it; verify with vendor guidance for RAID/ZFS edge cases.
Relations
- related
- ssd, garbage-collection, sata, nvme
Advantages
- Helps maintain write performance and reduces unnecessary erase cycles.