[ltp] X60s/200s with SSD, encrypted disk

[Paul Seelig]

On 06/21/2015 11:06 AM, Leon Weber wrote:
> That also meant I didn’t even have to bother with the unofficial 
> BIOS upgrade that enables SATA 2 on the X60 series laptops.  If
> you decide to go unencrypted or somehow use a hardware AES 
> implementation (built-in in your SSD or whatever), keep in mind
> the X60 series officially only supports SATA 1 link speeds, but
> google “lenovo X60 sata 2” for an unofficial BIOS upgrade that
> enables SATA 2.

There is no "unofficial BIOS upgrade that enables SATA 2" for any X60,
nor T60. The chipset of these machines simply does not support it as
it is a definite hardware limitation. This is a common misperception.

X61 and T61 are a whole different thing: These machines are based on
the so called Santa Rosa chipset which natively supports SATA2, but
has been deliberately limited to SATA1 by Lenovo, in order to prevent
assumed conflicts for the still IDE based UltraBay. The unofficial
BIOS by Middleton only removes this artifical limitation, in order to
enable the chipset to fulfill its dormant promise.

X60/T60 and X61/T61 might have similar looks and also share lots of
common hardware components, but chipset wise they are two completely
different machines. While the *60 chipset is hardware limited to SATA1
and 3GB RAM, with no possible workaround, the *61 machines do support
SATA2 (if unlocked) and can use up to 2x4=8GB of RAM.