Re: zero filling a storage device (was: dd and mbr)

On 14/01/2022 15:32, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> "Kevin P. Neal":
> 
>> Are we certain that an SSD won't at least track that there is nothing
>> written to a logical block and therefore it must be all zeros? I'm not
>> 100% that an SSD will always keep a logical block assigned to a physical
>> block. And I'm not 100% certain that an SSD won't notice that all zeros
>> are being written to a block and just optimize out the write.
> 
> It's tempting to speculate that an SSD could treat an all-zeros
> block write effectively like a TRIM.
> 
> I'll note that there are SSDs that compress the data written to
> them.  (Compression in storage devices isn't new.  Terry Welch's
> 1984 paper, where he presented the LZW compression algorithm, already
> talks about this.)
> 

May I suggest "man trim"? (From 12.1 onwards.)

-- 
Nothing teaches one not to try to stamp out burning thermite quite
like real-life experience.
			— James Davis Nicoll