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    Cf-W8 SATA II 1.5 Gb/s cap ?possible bios mod?

    Discussion in 'Panasonic' started by lwturtle, Mar 15, 2011.

  1. lwturtle

    lwturtle Newbie

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    Hi there, I am a newbie on here with my first toughbook CF-W8. Top-notch QUALITY! Love the toughbook even though the w8 spec is little old compare to current market unit. However, after a few upgrade, RMA and SSD, it turn out to be much better then one would thought.

    I am no computer expert by any means so I hope someone here can help me on the SATA question. The original HDDs are being swaped for SSD, and I cannot actually use it at full speed due to the SATA I is use for this machine.
    I'm not sure if this is the same case as the thinkpad T61/X61 where Lenovo put cap on the SATA port and limit to 150Gb/s for longer battery life.

    Is there possible to mod the bios to enable the SATA 3.0Gb/s like T61/x61? I copy below from ICH9's data sheet

    "The ICH9 has two integrated SATA host controllers that support independent DMA
    operation on up to six ports (desktop only) or four ports (mobile only) and supports
    data transfer rates of up to 3.0 Gb/s (300 MB/s). The SATA controller contains two
    modes of operation – a legacy mode using I/O space, and an AHCI mode using memory
    space. Software that uses legacy mode will not have AHCI capabilities."

    Thank you for taking the time to read this post.
     
  2. Alex

    Alex Super Moderator

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    I have not seen any bios mod's,
    Toughbooks are not as common as Acer's and others that have a larger interest base

    The throughput cap will effect you with ssd's and the cf-19/74/30 are all sata-1 as far as I know
    Blair has installed a Intel ssd in his cf-30
    The throughput is limited to 117mb/s where the same ssd in my Thinkpad is 177mb/s
    The positive: You still get double the performance over a 7200rpm hard drive
    The negative: You are capped at sata-1 throughput
     
  3. matty169

    matty169 Newbie

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    ttt thanks