Sandforce Life Time Throttling

[johnw]

What I would suggest would be disabling trim (+OS restart to make sure everything is applied), do a secure erase with all methods you know and start the endurance again. Maybe writing at a lower speed due to lack of trim will trigger the Duraclass much later.

So far, everything I have seen with Ao1's data is consistent with Sandforce's explanation of lifetime throttle as a cumulative linear write limit -- basically, a line (bytes written vs. power-on hours) that it will not allow you to exceed (at least, not for long). Based on Ao1's data, total bytes written / power-on time gives the slope of that line as about 20 MB/s for Ao1's SSD. Once you cross that line, it throttles the write speed back to about one-third of the line slope, 6 - 7 MB/s, until you have recrossed the line onto the safe side. Then it releases the throttle. It must throttle the write speed to less than the slope of the line, otherwise you would not cross back to the other side of the line.

Given this explanation, what does TRIM have to do with it?