Windows 7 and above are set to automatically enable TRIM on solid-state drives. You shouldn´t need to worry about enabling TRIM yourself. But, if you want to double-check that Windows has enabled TRIM, you can.
When TRIM is enabled, Windows will send an instruction to your solid-state drive every time you delete a file. The solid-state drive can then automatically erase that file´s contents. This is important for maintaining speedy solid-state drive performance.
How to Check if TRIM Is Enabled
You´ll need to check this from an Administrator Command Prompt window. To open an Administrator Command Prompt window on Windows 10 or 8.1, right-click the Start button and select Command Prompt (Admin).
On Windows 7, open the Start menu, search for Command Prompt, right-click the Command Prompt shortcut, and select Run as Administrator.
Run the following command in the Command Prompt window:
fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify
You´ll see one of two results. If you see DisableDeleteNotify
= 0 , TRIM is enabled. Everything is good and you don´t need to
worry about it.
If you see DisableDeleteNotify = 1 , TRIM
is disabled. This is a problem if you have an SSD.
How to Enable TRIM
Windows should automatically enable TRIM if you have a modern version of Windows with a modern solid-state drive. If TRIM is disabled, it´s possible that Windows knows something you don´t, and TRIM shouldn´t be enabled for a drive. Perhaps it´s a a very old solid-state drive. However, it´s also possible that TRIM really should be enabled but something messed up in the automatic detection process.
If TRIM isn´t enabled and you´d like to enable it, you can forcibly do so by running the following command in an Administrator Command Prompt window:
fsutil behavior set DisableDeleteNotify 0
(If you´d like to disable TRIM afterwards for some
reason, run the above command with a 1 in place of the 0
.)
How to Check if Windows Is Running Retrim on a Schedule
RELATED: Don´t Waste Time Optimizing Your SSD, Windows Knows What Its Doing
On Windows 8 and 10, Windows automatically optimizes solid-state drives on a schedule by running the retrim operation. This is necessary because, if many TRIM requests are sent to a drive at once, the requests may build up in a queue and then be discarded. Windows regularly performs retrim optimizations that ensure all the TRIM requests sent to a drive are in fact processed. You can read more about this on Microsoft employee Scott Hanselman´s blog.
The retrim feature is only included in Windows 8 and 10, so Windows 7 users don´t need to worry about this.
To check that Windows is performing retrim optimizations on a schedule, open the Optimize Drives application. Open the Start menu, search for Optimize Drives, and click the Defragment and Optimize Drives shortcut.
Click the Change Settings button and ensure Run on a Schedule (Recommended) is enabled. By default, Windows will run the retrim optimization on a weekly schedule.
Again, this isn´t something you should need to worry about. If your computer has an SSD, Windows should automatically enable TRIM and enable optimizing the drive with retrim on a schedule. These options should just be enabled by default. But it´s worth giving a quick look to make sure everything´s running properly.