Thinkpad Hard Drive Firmware Update

Just discovered the page on Lenovo's website indicating there's a firmware update for the T61 hard drive. Not sure how old this is but anyone who missed it and has less than desireable laptop performance may want to check this out.

Downloading and installing the firmware has had a good effect on my computer.

Just a heads-up for people who do not know it exists.

 

what kind of improvements or good effects are we talking about?

 

My laptop was prone to intermittent freezing before the firmware update. Hasn't happened since.

An indicator at how much better the hard drive is operating -- the Vista gadgets used to load up a few seconds after the desktop screen would open up. Now the Vista gadgets appear on the desktop as soon as it is loaded up. Not that I care how and when they appear but that would indicate better hard drive performance.

Total start-up time has been reduced. Loading times have been reduced.

My hard drive previously failed the SMART short test in PC Doctor. This is no longer the case.

One SMART attribute, Spin Up Time, registered a Warning in SpeedFan's hard disk analysis. It no longer does and the value is much vastly improved over what it had previously registered in at.

 

nice to hear =D

 

See above for my experience having updated the firmware. All good so far.

 

What's the link to the download page? I don't see it on the T61 download matrix.

 

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-63685

This firmware package is supported on the following systems:
- ThinkPad R60, R60e, R60i
- ThinkPad R61, R61e, R61i
- ThinkPad T60, T60p
- ThinkPad T61, T61p
- ThinkPad X60, X60s, X60 Tablet
- ThinkPad X61, X61s, X61 Tablet
- ThinkPad Z60m, Z60t
- ThinkPad Z61e, Z61m, Z61p, Z61t

 

I have downloaded the firmware, burnt to disc and nothing happens when I boot, can't seem to install it.

 

Did you adjust the boot sequence in BIOS?

 

I tried adjust the boot sequence, also the F12 boot selection thingy.

It only flashes "_" and no update at all.

 

BTW when I tried to burn the iso, I only got something like 24K and 48 sectors (vice versa) of data, is this right?

 

Turns out it's my burning software, thanks though

 

This is a good ISO burner,

http://www.imgburn.com/

 

Updated to the new firmware. So far, nothing different. Same boot time and everything. Using XP.

 

I tried to update, turns out my 7K200 doesn't need to be updated :O

 

I'm using Vista so it could be that the firmware more or less made things more efficient in Vista (which seems to have the hard drive spinning a lot more).

 

Just an update.

Since upgrading firmware, not one Vista freeze-up issue requiring a reboot where this was happening at least every day or two a couple times.

 

It seems that Lenovo states: "It will then check the firmware revision of the drive and judge whether your system requires a firmware update.", which means that if it will not install anything, then you're already good to go without it.

The HDD is spinning more in Vista because of SuperFetch.

 

Anyone manage to upgrade without docking bay and internal DVD drive?

It is hard to find the contents of the ISO file to copy them to a bootable USB (with show hidden files + protected OS files). The BIOS upgrade ISO allowed one to get hold of the files and make a HP bootable USB drive with "Lenovo DOS" but that doesn't work this time round.