I use Hard Disk Sentinel (HDS) to monitor my hard drives. I sent a test report to HDS and queried why HDS did not report the Trim status of my M.2 NVMe SSD. I received the following reply (the English is as received!). (The text in italics is my own doing for emphasis). I was impressed that my query to the developer triggered a modification to HDS which resulted in a new version being rolled out. Under “Feedback” below, you will see that I tested a trial version of the new update before it was released to the general public, and it reflected the TRIM status of M.2 NVMe SSDs correctly. (Cudos and many thanks to the HDS development team!!)
Feedback from HDS Technical Team. (The English is as received!):
“To be honest, displaying the TRIM status is designed to work with SATA SSDs only,
where there can be problem with TRIM at all.
You may know, with fsutil we can check if the OS uses TRIM command at all,
but it shows absolutely no info if the TRIM command would really “reach” the device
or it may be blocked by the disk controller or its driver – which is a common situation
for SATA SSDs.
This is why Hard Disk Sentinel focused to verify and show TRIM status for these SSDs where
there may be a problem – even if fsutil would show that TRIM is enabled.
Please note that most other tools only checks fsutil and always show TRIM = working
for SATA SSDs too, when it may be not working at all.
However, with NVMe SSDs, things are different: due to design of the driver, TRIM
should be always working – there is no similar situation – except if we really disable
TRIM by fsutil.
Generally fsutil always shows TRIM = enabled, even if there is no SSD in the system. Personally I see no reason and never saw situation when TRIM was disabled by the user (by using fsutil). And if we consider that it is enabled by the OS and the driver can’t cause problems, then we can assume TRIM is always working for the NVMe SSD.
This is why until now Hard Disk Sentinel did not display such information for this type
of SSDs. But I completely understand and agree that
– this information may be assuring (as it would confirm things are working as should)
– if we see TRIM status for simpler/cheaper SATA SSDs, we may expect for NVMe SSDs too.
– if fsutil may be used to really disable TRIM – the message should notify about it to change setting
So the updated Hard Disk Sentinel version should display TRIM status: both if working
and if not working (if we really disable by fsutil at the OS level. You may try – and perform
a complete re-detect in Hard Disk Sentinel to show the changed TRIM status).”
My comment:
They certainly make it clear that Trim being reported as ENABLED does NOT necessarily mean it is actually functioning!
FEEDBACK AFTER TESTING TRIAL VERSION:
I installed the new test version of HDS as provided to me by their technical personnel and it reported that Trim is enabled for my M.2 NVMe SSD. I had not known that “Data Set Management Commands” also refer to the status of Trim (never too old to learn!). I sent HDS a new test Report and received the following response:
Reply from HDS Technical Team (the English is as received!):
“Thanks for the new report !
Glad to hear things are working now correctly, TRIM is reported active as should 
I can confirm that the support of TRIM is displayed (and was displayed too in previous versions), see the Information page:
Dataset Management Command . . . . . . . . . . . : Supported
Generally with different SSDs, this is a bigger class of commands to manage how the sectors are used (and can be freed).
As you may notice for SATA SSDs too, this is also displayed:
> Data Set Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Supported
> TRIM Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Supported
As for SATA SSDs, TRIM command is only part of this management, but with NVMe SSDs, the Dataset Management means itself that sectors are freed when unused.
This is why TRIM differently is not displayed, just the Dataset Management Command feature.
I can show TRIM there too, but would be not really true, as (if we want to be 100% correct) this is not really TRIM command, but a slightly different (even if does something similar in functionality).”
My comment:
An updated version of HDS was subsequently released to the general public.
So, for SSDs “Trim Enabled” in HDS also means Trim FUNCTIONING! I am now happy.
My Rig: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12-Core CPU; ASUS Cross Hair VIII Formula Mobo; Win 11 Pro (64 bit)-(UEFI-booted); 32GB RAM; 2TB Corsair Force Series MP600 Pro 2TB PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD. 1TB SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2 NVME SSD; MSI GeForce RTX 3090 VENTUS 3X 24G OC; Microsoft 365 Home; Condusiv SSDKeeper Professional; Acronis Cyberprotect, VMWare Workstation Pro V17.5. HP 1TB USB SSD External Backup Drive). Dell G-Sync G3223Q 144Hz Monitor.
