techcafe Posted June 30, 2009 Share Posted June 30, 2009 i'm not sure if this is covered elsewhere in the forum, but it turns out that certain late generation ThinkPads do not support SATA II speeds (despite the false advertising on the Lenovo website). turns out that the ThinkPad's chipset DOES support SATA II (3.0 Gb/s), BUT the 'brilliant' Lenovo engineers decided to cripple the system at SATA I (1.5 Gb/s), to provide backward compatibility with UltraBay drives. so, the bus actually runs at the much slower 1.5 Gb/s (SATA I), NOT 3.0 Gb/s (SATA II). of course, on the Lenovo website, they've done an excellent job of obscuring this annoying little fact. for instance, the spec sheet for the ThinkPad T61p explicitly states "SATA 3.0 Gb/s" for the drive specifications... yet, they make no mention anywhere that the drive will actually operate at 1.5 Gb/s, the slower SATA I speed, because of the UltraBay compatibility restriction. pretty sneaky of Lenovo. i'm surprised they aren't being sued over this. anyone interested in a class action with me?? and this is not the first time i've had to send a computer back to Lenovo because of false/misleading advertising. so, if you upgraded your ThinkPad and are not getting the rated speeds for your SSD... blame Lenovo. btw, Thank You to RAMGUY for drawing my attention to this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techcafe Posted June 30, 2009 Author Share Posted June 30, 2009 there's more info on the ThinkPad vs SATA II scandal to be found HERE Lenovo better deal with this ASAP, and release a BIOS update to correct the problem - enable SATA II - otherwise they are going to end-up with a lot of unhappy ThinkPad customers, including myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted June 30, 2009 Corsair Employees Share Posted June 30, 2009 NP and thank you for taking the time to post your findings as I am sure it will help others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techcafe Posted July 1, 2009 Author Share Posted July 1, 2009 good news... i got a call from Lenovo today, a nice guy named Mark offered to make things right by giving me the option to trade-in my T61p machines for different/newer models ThinkPads, ie, that are not effected by the notorious GPU 'latency' issues and SATA I restriction. so, that makes me happy, thank you Lenovo for caring about your customers. i was surprised by the phone call, and pleased. i'll follow-up on this later, after i get my new ThinkPads... hopefully with more good news. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted July 1, 2009 Corsair Employees Share Posted July 1, 2009 Yes please do let us know that is good news. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jedisolo Posted July 5, 2009 Share Posted July 5, 2009 I do know the new Thinkpad T series support SATA II. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techcafe Posted July 5, 2009 Author Share Posted July 5, 2009 I do know the new Thinkpad T series support SATA II. yes, that's true... i believe the T400/500 series (and later) are not effected by the SATA I restriction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted July 6, 2009 Corsair Employees Share Posted July 6, 2009 It has not been uncommon for some NB's to have the speed for memory and HDD limited to preserve battery life. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
techcafe Posted July 6, 2009 Author Share Posted July 6, 2009 It has not been uncommon for some NB's to have the speed for memory and HDD limited to preserve battery life. perhaps, but in this particular case, aggressive power management is not the issue effecting the T-series ThinkPads. the SATA I limitation is caused by the UltraBay SATA-to-PATA conversion component, as discussed HERE. from an engineering perspective, the selection of that particular component was a poor choice... Lenovo's engineers corrected their mistake in later models, albeit a bit too late for those of us who got stuck with T61 machines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aphyny55 Posted January 16, 2010 Share Posted January 16, 2010 Thank you Techcafe for bringing the SATA-I restriction and GU Latency issue to my attention. How are your new Thinkpads working out? I was wondering if you could instruct me and others how to go about trading in our faulty T61's for the corrected models. Such as providing names, e-mails, phone numbers of people who understand the problem and would be willing to help. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corsair Employees RAM GUY Posted January 18, 2010 Corsair Employees Share Posted January 18, 2010 I would suggest starting with the normal RMA process and go from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
x509 Posted January 19, 2010 Share Posted January 19, 2010 Thank you Techcafe for bringing the SATA-I restriction and GU Latency issue to my attention. How are your new Thinkpads working out? I was wondering if you could instruct me and others how to go about trading in our faulty T61's for the corrected models. Such as providing names, e-mails, phone numbers of people who understand the problem and would be willing to help. Thanks! First, I would like to say Attaboy ! and a big thank you, Techcafe. :D: :D: Second, Lenovo warrants these machines (except for the batteries :mad:) for three years. I wonder if the warranty can be invoked as a justification. That being said, i'm pretty p/o'ed even though I have a hard drive and not an SSD. I spent extra for a 7200 rpm replacement for the original 5400 rpm drive that came with my machine. So I too would be very, very interested in a "make good" process. Has this been discussed on the Lenovo forums? Also, not to defend Lenovo, but my T61 Thinkpad has an IBM logo :bigeyes: on to the right of the keyboard. Thanks, x509 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kamika007z Posted August 23, 2010 Share Posted August 23, 2010 Just as a note: The SATA-II cap has been broken via BIOS update! Check it out here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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