Do I need to enable TRIM if I have a non-Intel/Samsung

Solution 1:

Everything is already installed.

The command to activate trim 1 time:

sudo fstrim -v /

It will take a while and then show the results. Example:

sudo fstrim -v /
[sudo] password for rinzwind: 
/: 93184647168 bytes were trimmed

And it is set up by default to run once a week for -supported devices-:

$ locate fstrim
/etc/cron.weekly/fstrim
/sbin/fstrim

If you check the cron job it is all explained:

$ more /etc/cron.weekly/fstrim 
#!/bin/sh
# call fstrim-all to trim all mounted file systems which support it
set -e

# This only runs on Intel and Samsung SSDs by default, as some SSDs with faulty
# firmware may encounter data loss problems when running fstrim under high I/O
# load (e. g.  https://launchpad.net/bugs/1259829). You can append the
# --no-model-check option here to disable the vendor check and run fstrim on
# all SSD drives.
exec fstrim-all

If the manual method works, you can add --no-model-check to the command at the end (exec fstrim-all) for it to activate.

The link in the file is an interesting read. It also has a method to check if your disc is bugged. A lot of the cheaper SSDs are faulty and could destroy data.

And to top it off: this is a list of compatible hardware (PDF download) including SSDs.

There is another method where you add discard to your fstab for permanent trimming. Benchmarks (German) favor fstrim over discard.