Thinkpad SATA 1.5GB/s limitation (with SSD)

How old are your thinkpads? I wonder if they will do this for anyone who complains.

Also, what is this GPU latency, i never heard of it.

 

the machines are less than 6 months old... but i doubt that Lenovo will replace machines, just b/c people complain. if you have multiple issues with your systems (like i did), then you might want to talk to a Lenovo rep about it though. some of them can be quite helpful and pleasant to deal with... others, not so much. ymmv.

the GPU issue involved latency spikes that caused the system to suddenly freeze, for about a second, which caused other nasty side-effects like brief audio dropouts (stuttering), skipped frames during video playback, and so on. lenovo is still not sure what's causing the problem, but everything seems to point to a bad video driver (the latency spikes occur as the GPU transitions in/out of its various power states), and this issue has been reported by quite a number of T61 owners.

 

"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 of ThinkPads, ie, that are not effected by the notorious GPU 'latency' (audio stutter) issues and the SATA I restriction."

What about the rest of us?

 

well i'm not sure what to tell you. in my particular case, there were multiple (ongoing) issues with the machines, not just the SATA thing, and that's why the Lenovo rep suggested replacement, instead of sending the machines in for repair (for the latency thing). of course, there's nothing they can do to fix the SATA issue, unless the engineers are able to figure-out how to enable SATA II with a BIOS update (but they say it can't be done, b/c of some hardware restriction).

unfortunately, i can't really advise you, beyond that.

 

Hi, everyone,

I'm a T61p owner and was doing a SSD market research when I stumbled upon this thread. Seems like OCZ Vertex Turbo is not going to give me what I was going to pay for.

I was waiting patiently until the dreaded memory/GPU problem was solved, to buy a problem free workstation. Now there's seem to be another problem. A question rises: WТF?

Any news in this topic, guys?

 

the only thing i can suggest is talk to your local Lenovo rep, and hope that you get to speak with someone who is genuinely helpful and aware of the GPU/latency and SATA issues, OR try to sell the T61p on e-bay (but be honest about why you're getting rid of it).

as for myself, i'm still in negotiations with Lenovo. i can understand why they'd not want to commit to replacing machines, because that could be costly for Lenovo. however, it could be a lot more costly for them in the future, from all the unhappy ThinkPad customers and the PR damage to go along with it.

btw, the T400/500 machines apparently do not suffer from the SATA I limitation, presumably because the engineers learned from the mistakes they made with the earlier generation of T-series machines (the crappy SATA-PATA conversion chip).

good luck

 

Hi, thanks for your advice.

But neither W500 nor T500 are attractive, even though they don't have SATA limitation. I bought my T61p last winter and I didn't go for a next gen ThinkPad by choice.

There are skillful folks in the ThinkPad community and SSDs are getting more and more popular. I believe it's a matter of time for this annoyance to become a history.

 

i took the plunge and got an intel x-25m. i can personally vouch that the t400 does NOT suffer from this problem.

oh, and if you get an x25, make sure you apply the firmware update, or your performance will decrease;

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2009/04/20/review_update_storage_ssd_intel_x25_m/

 

Yes - Lenovo have provided underperforming equipment and have used misleading bait-and-switch advertising. You did not receive a 3Gbps enabled ICH8M I/O chipset since it's bios capped to 1.5Gbps.

A bios upgrade, a refund or a free T400/T500 such that do get a 3Gbps SATA port are the only solutions I can see for Lenovo to correct this misleading advertising.

 

Bump? .

 

Spoke with a lenovo staff member today who told me he spoke with the product engineers for the T61. Check the other thread on this for more info.

 

To which other thread are you referring, please?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=399772

 

Seems very unlikely that we're going to get a patched BIOS from Lenovo, especially since the 23-page thread over at Lenovo.com was closed by a Lenovo engineer saying we're all SOL.

This is why I bought the smallest G2 Intel X25-M drive. Next year, I'll buy a Calpella laptop with a 320 GB SSD, hopefully at SATA6 by then. For now, even at SATA1.5, the X25 will be much snappier than a 7200 RPM HDD.

Thanks for keeping on this, regardless.

 

This issue is not going to go away by Lenovo sidelining it. If frustrated by the foot-dragging by Lenovo for a 5min bios fix to change the CAP.ISS from 0001(1h - 1.5Gbs) to 0010 (2h - 3Gbps), consider a changeover to a T400/T500 but keep receipts and send a Letter Of Compensation to Lenovo, the cost of correcting their mistake.

 

No, he did not. The thread is locked because the official response had already been posted, but your message is still there at http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/...iew=by_date_ascending&message.id=35823#M35823 and your username is still active.

 

Apology. You are correct and yes I can log on. Please disregard my previous comment relating to Mark_Lenovo.

 

I recently purchased a Patriot 128GB SSD Torqx. This thing is smokin... 230 MB/s read and 200MB/s write.

Imagine my surprise when the T61p could not exceed 129 MB/s on HDTune, HDTach or ATTO.

I called Lenovo after reading this thread.

I first talked to tech support.
They referred me back to sales who..you guessed it referred me back to tech support.

I then called back tech support and talked to a guy in Atlanta, GA. First he told me that my issue was not a "technical issue". He says that is the laptop was broken then it is technical. If it has to do with specs or engineering then it is not up to him. I reviewed with him the spec sheet that clearly states that the T61p runs at SATA II specs, this is why I bought the machine. He was not sure what SATA II was apparently and still maintained that "you have to look at the specs when you buy the machine and that he could help me buy a new notebook". I informed him that this was not the point. The point is that Lenovo misrepresented a spec on a widely used machine and now refuses to address the issue with a BIOS fix, a hardware fix or even a tech support response. I actually told him about how I had purchased 4 laptops starting with the T41 from Lenovo at a total cost of over $10000 in the last 6 years. If I cannot get satisfaction on this issue, other than a brush off, I would not buy Lenovo again. He said that "he can't say what machine I should buy in the future". I was stunned. Here is a Lenovo rep who actually tells me he is really not interested in my future buying decisions.

I actually gave him an example:

You buy a T9300 notebook lets say..it arrives with a Celeron chip... Does Lenovo need to step up and admit that the spec was inaccurate? The sales rep did not know the answer to the hypothetical.

Anyway here is what I wanted....

I asked him that I recognize that I DO NOT deserve a new 2009 notebook. I do deserve a comparable machine (from old stock or even a refurb) that has a WUXGA screen, 15" and a TRUE SATA II capable hard drive bay with an equivalent CPU. I just spent 400 bucks on a SSD drive that is awesome but is schackled by Lenovo's design. I really feel this was a misrepresentation of sales. We entered into a contract with Lenovo when we bought these machines. They promised to deliver what was advertised. They did not. It is only now coming out that the SATA II spec was a qualified one given the fact that SSDs were not even being sold in early 2008/late 2007. Now that they are, this glaring flaw is being exposed and Lenovo needs to man up and face up to it.

I got a promise that a "manager" would call me back.

Lets see what happens.

My last question.

Has anyone thought about filing a small claims case. $30 bucks and some time.
I am thinking about it. Either Lenovo sends a rep to the case or you get a default judgement. The other possibility is that there is an arbitration clause somewhere in the fine print that requires an arbitrator to step in to mediate.

Any lawyers out there who could answer (or if a family member is a lawyer).

 

Please see the thread I created (you can click on the blue picture in my Sig to link to it). Many of us with T61/R61/X61s are having the EXACT SAME ISSUE you are and Lenovo continues to deny their laptops were falsely advertised to support SATA II 3.0 Gb/s speeds.

PM me if you need any information on what to do. I've been talking with Lenovo for a long time about this issue and we're currently working on a class action lawsuit.

 

I don't get it.

Why doesn't Lenovo address this issue. Why the head in the sand attitude?

Will Lenovo or better yet, can Lenovo fix this in a BIOS update?
Are there any hacked BIOSes out there to enable SATA II on the main HDD bay?

Is small claims court something anyone has started?

 

If you look at from Lenovo's perspective they can't win. Either they don't fix and have to hear the wrath of customers who feel they've been wronged or if there is truly a problem with data integrity as Lenovo says, somewhere down the line they're going to hear from customers who've lost their data. I think if there was an easy solution they would have done it, but that's just my 2¢.

 

Yes. Lenovo have an easy bios fix available to them as shown here. They just need to set in the bios code the maximum speed supported by controller on it's ports to 3Gbps by setting CAP.ISS=2h (3Gbps) instead of CAP.ISS=1h (1.5Gbs) as it is now. As long as they followed Intel's guide to Electromagnetic specifications for the SATA link on the primary bay there will be no data loss.

If they haven't, well then they're whole product hasn't followed either Intel's spec nor have they delivered their advertised 3Gbps link speed in which case the product is deserving of being binned, with customers given a full refund.

Lenovo's claims of data loss refer to the Ultrabay adapter, which is a PATA interface and uses a Marvell sata-to-pata bridge chip. Nothing to do with the primary bay.

They have also capped the X61 product, which doesn't even have the ultrabay connectivity available to it since it doesn't have an optical drive bay. If they've advertised the X61 as 3Gbps capable as well, then those customers should consider getting a X200 replacement or a refund as well unless Lenovo bring out a bios fix.

 

Well, then hack the BIOS and be done with it. The X61 has the X6 UltraBase, which uses a PATA drive as well.

 

The optical bay's PATA interface has nothing to do with the primary bay's SATA interface being capped to 1.5Gbps.

We should assign responsibility here. It's not a hacker's job to do this. It's Lenovo's job since they advertised unit as having a SATA 3Gbps primary bay. Lenovo have also made it hard to mod the bios. Besides a request was made 1.5 months ago on mydigitalife forum with zero useful response: Lenovo T61P bios mod request - remove the 1.5Gbps SATA-II capping to allow 3Gbps mode.

Can you Imagine if Lenovo mangement paid a premium for a 996GT2, with cyclinder deactivation on permanently so that only 3 of the 6 cyclinders worked realizing only after they too delivery of the unit? Then they were offered the 997GT2 with all cyclinders working as expected which they could acquire after they trade in their 996GT2 at a massive loss. The sum total of this behaviour would be considered fraud, bait-and-switch, extortion, theft.

Lenovo themselves are no stranger to Fraud and Scamming, since they put a big Fraud/Scam advisory banner on their forum. Yet who is the Fraudster/Scammer here? "Do as I say, not as I do" comes to mind, with Moral Compass pointing to ZERO. $$Lenovo's bottom line$$ is unaffected as yet by this issue.

 

Well said indeed

 

Too bad most companies are motivated by profits first. But that's probably just capitalism speaking.

 

I have a T61 (as well as a more recent W500) and I'm honestly flabbergasted as to how so many folks on this board appear distraught and upset that a computer with 2-year old (minimum) technology can't take advantage of the cutting edge of today's storage devices (SSD's) - just buy the latest T400 and be done with it already!

If you're a power user that needs (or desires) the advantages of SSDs you'd want a faster processer and the other updates that the T400 brings to the table anyway, over the T61.

The T61 is a DATED piece of hardware that was never meant to make full use of the SSDs of today and the transfer rates that they are able to achieve.. no amount of threats or lawyer's letters is going to change what Lenovo does or thinks about this.

How could data transfer rates of 200+ MBPs have been on Lenovo's minds when they released the T61 2-3 years ago?

 

Seriously, did you just post this, you have a serious lack of reading comprehension

 

Mate, you really have no computer knowledge, do you? Your entire post is simply...ridiculous

 

It makes perfect sense to me and I would hardly call myself a novice. We can do without the personal attacks either. Calling into question someone's tech savvy after one post hardly seems a well reasoned position.

 

He called into question his tech knowlege because his reasoning for why our arguments are preposterous is because the t61 is old and shouldn't be expected to support sataII speeds.

But there are plenty of other machines that are just as old and support full sata II speeds, and more importantly, the t61 has a SATAII controller on it! All evidence and all of the hardware info points to the fact that it can run at sataII speeds if lenovo was willing to fix the bios.

 

I'm not going to argue this with you. This is the way it's going to be. We can debate even vigorously without resorting to this. He didn't call into question their tech knowledge regarding SATA controllers on ThinkPads, they said you have no tech knowledge, which is not the same thing and in my opinion steps over the bounds of debate. You implied they hadn't read the posts because their position was different than yours. The poster's position is essentially the same as mine. Do I have no tech knowledge or have I not read the posts, which I would remind you, I wrote some of them.

At this point we have have two SATA I speeds on the T61/R61/X61 so this thread seems redundant. I'm going to close this thread and you may continue the discussion in the other thread. I would remind you to keep things civil.