Simon Hobson writes:
> [1] The drive "most likely" does not know about partitioning,
> and even if it did, it would be very dangerous to assume that
> any space not occupied by a partition was "fair game" to be
> erased since there may be other ways the space might be used
> (for example, the way Grub uses space before the first
> partition). So if the space has been used before,
> re-partitioning without somehow informing the drive that the
> excess space is now free, will not give any benefit.

Hm... I had to trace the commands issued to a buggy drive a few years ago,
and ubuntu certainly TRIMmed the entire drive as part of installing when I
told it to get rid of all the existing data on the drive. I think the TRIM
was issued by the installer, but don't hold me to that.

(The bug was related to SATA command timeouts and very large TRIM commands,
FWIW.)

Arnt