Does SSD drive need to be idle to execute TRIM?

[idata]

I'm considering purchasing an intel SSD for a dedicated game server to be hosted in a colocation facility. I have an Intel SSD in my personal laptop and I'm familiar with the toolbox. I have a TRIM scheduled for 3AM every day, when I know I won't be using the computer. It works great.

However, the game server will be seeing heavy use at all hours (it is an international gaming community). There's no guarantee that it will be idle when the TRIM command is scheduled. My question is, will the TRIM command execute if the drive is not idle? If it can execute while the drive is in use (reading/writing) will there be a momentary decrease in performance?

Thanks!

[idata]

TRIM is on-the-fly.

Without TRIM, a file delete would just remove references to the file. The chunks of this no longer used file sits on the SSD and cause a performance hit when the SSD wants to use them in the future

With TRIM, a file delete tells the SSD to read the block into cache, remove the deleted pages, and write back the cleaned block.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/10 http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738/10

Also, you do not need to run SSD Optimizer everyday. Intel SSDs are already resilent. For a desktop user without TRIM, you probably can run it once every month.

[idata]

There is one additional suggestion. (DuckieHo might not agree, in which case I would defer to him).

Given that the fact that your server will be putting up considerable strain on your SSD you could change your primary partition to a smaller size (80%) of your capacity. This "unused" extra space would give your drive an additional ability to handle the constant read/write activity on your server.

[idata]

Correct, any unused capacity would increase the pool area of "spare" NAND and reduce wear quite significantly.

[mmokk]

free space helps, but it is not necessary for the free space to be in a separate partition or in unpartitioned space on the drive.

just don't fill the drive up and you'll be fine.

p.s. game servers are generally not heavily i/o bound.