[ltp] Upgrading hard drive on T61

[Jens Rutschmann]

John Jason Jordan schrieb am 06.08.2009 01:57:
> On Wed, 5 Aug 2009 23:37:22 +0200
> Jochen Schulz <ml@well-adjusted.de> dijo:
> 
>> Jens Rutschmann:
>>> Cherife Li wrote on 05.08.2009 19:48:
>>>> ICH8M SATA Controller is SATA-2.
>>>> It's said that Lenovo limited data transfer rate to 100MB/s on south
>>>> bridge of 945 and 965 motherboards.
>>> Can anyone confirm this?
>> http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=T_Series_Thinkpads&thread.id=34685&page=23
> 
> Thanks for the link. 
> 
> After spending half an hour reading the threads on that link I can see
> that it would be pointless for me to replace the hard drive. 
> 
> When I bought my T61 I was aware that it was SATA-1 speed, but I
> thought the limitation was in the hard disk. Now that I know that
> Lenovo deliberately crippled the IBM controller I am bummed. I just
> checked and it turns out that I bought this machine in spring, 2008. I
> expected to get three years of life from it. I still can, but I will be
> stuck with poor performance and no way to upgrade.
> 
> I am even more irritated at Lenovo. Crippling the controller was a poor
> design decision, but bad decisions happen sometimes, especially in the
> fast-moving world of computers. What I find unacceptable is their
> attitude toward their existing customers. They are destroying the good
> name IBM earned for the name "Thinkpad" in order to gain short term
> profits. If I owned Lenovo stock I'd sell it, because in a few years
> the Thinkpad reputation will be gone and they'll have nothing left to
> trade on.
> 
> I also think Lenovo has lost a customer.

Did you also see this link?
"INFO: Enabling 3Gbps mode on the ICH8M SATA Controller"
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4882948#post4882948

Has been posted somewhere in the long thread.

Looks a bit like a hack... but since it seems to change the link speed only 
until the next reboot someone could try it (I don't have a SSD yet and most 
probably won't buy one until this is resolved).

Also this thread (which is still active) might be of interest:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?s=29516f2b00db5932da3f066d16a0f9cf&t=399772&page=11


Basically what these threads are telling us is that it only requires a rather 
small BIOS change to remove the limitation.

Disclaimer: That's what I understood by reading the threads, I might be wrong.


Best regards,
Jens