Sony Vaio S Series - SATA 3 Investigation

Absolute movement for Synaptics touchpad in Windows?

 

Not saying that you should accept it, in fact I have stated that Sony is naughty for disabling sataIII in bios, in fact the 2011 model had Sata III to begin with but then Sony issued a bios update which had disabled sataIII. Remember Sandy Bridge too supported SATA III natively.

People shouldn't return their laptops just to get sony's ssds, that would be ludicrous and ridiculous. No I should have made this clearer, what I meant was it forces new consumers to buy Sony's extortionate raid 0 sata III ssds. Check Sony's Japan's website, it advertises「第3世代 SSD RAID」- Translated it means 3rd Generation ssd with raid, plus check out the benchmark below for Sony's SSD

Very roughly twice as fast as samsung's 830 write speeds. Does that tell you something yet? I should hope so.

Thus my complaint("accusation") stands, sony is persuading new consumers to use their ssds, if not you lose out on raid and sata III speeds.

I would be extremely happy if someone finds a way of giving SATA III from bios and overclocks the GPU at the same time, that would essentially future proof my machine for at least 3 -4 years.

I also said that SATA II is fine for most people doing day to day computing unless yours involves some heavy data transfer .etc Like a web server, your usage of developing and running numerous virtual machines at once is not really reminiscent of the usage of most people. But since the feature is there and proven, It is naughty of sony to disable SATA III at bios level.

Finally I never said that people should accept what they get. In fact I believe in free choices and people shouldn't be limited by the manufacture.

I am also tired of people trying to back up companies that have blatantly done something naughty. Like Apple and their iSheep who will defend Apple no matter the cost like their breath depends on it. (note only for comparison)

I think so, because the synaptics pad on the sony is actually very good it's fluid and smooth. Whereas HP uses synaptics as well and is truly awful, one of the worst I've used. So I guess drivers from manufactures are more important than they used to be, I used to use synaptics generic driver on older laptops as manufactures ceased support.

 

Going to try to uninstall the Intel drivers later and see if this works, again I'm not too hopeful aswell! Sony blatantly know about the problem existing.

just wanted to take a slight detour with this thread and talk a bit more about the speakers on this laptop. Is it me or are they REALLLLY quiet. When I first got my laptop the other day I could have sworn that the speakers were louder but since then I've reinstalled with my own copy of Windows 7 Home and have reinstalled the drivers minus the bloatware.

Can anybody tell me what drivers they are using for the speakers. Mine used to be Realtek ones but for some reason they've updated themselves to the Microsoft High Definition Audio Device drivers. For anybody who doesn't know how to do this, right click the volume icon (bottom right hand corner of the screen) and select Playback Devices.

Another little problem I wanted to run by you all. Anybody getting the buzzing issue through external speakers when your laptop's charger is plugged in. I tried this yesterday and found this to be unbearable, only way to solve the problem was to take the charger out.

 

That is most likely down to the wiring in your house/apartment. Common problem for analog output from computers and such.

 

Ah right. Never had that problem with my previous MB Pro though being powered through the same socket. I thought it was quite weird.

 

Show me where Sony is marketing that you have to use their SSDs for sata III. If you can't show me that, then how are they using that to promote their SSDs? Again...you think the tiny tiny minority of people that know/care about this are somehow targeting by Sony and "Naughtiness"....seems absurd.

Hmm...2 drives in raid 0 are faster than one drive (different drive/manu) by itself, seems self explanatory to me. Doesn't tell me that they are doing anything special though.

Again...my god, please show me where they are marketing this and saying that if you use your own, you might get sata II speeds.

Me too, which is why you should call them and escalate, and bug the crap out of them every week of your life until they do something.

Again, not naughty, I just think they need to fix the bugs and work out issues so it's enabled for all third party ssds/drives.

 

Yes I agree about the speakers, they are very quiet, however you can boost them up a little by enabling the dolby thing...not sure if you've done that yet. It's still way too quiet, but much louder than "stock" without the dolby thing on.

I haven't tried externals much yet, I will let you know what I find.

 

Everyone have been talking about their quiet speakers, and I got no idea why. I can't keep my windows volume at max because the sound is way too high if I do. It has bad sound quality, but it is really high. The quality got a bit better by switching from the Dolby mode.

 

Ok sure I'll even provide screen shots, firstly since Sony is trying to save costs, The Vaio line is now exactly the same globally - Sony no longer differentiates core features. Apart from the US not getting WWAN (WiMAX) [not really a core feature], this is due to the restructuring of Sony itself.
So really all the information on Sony Japan is accurate. Please check out the links below. Too big to embed onto forum.

Screenshot 1 - Sony Japan features page

Screenshot 2 - Sony Japan's specifications page.

Screenshot 3 - Sony technical supports says that the s series does not support SATA III
This means that Sony chooses to support SATA III only through their more expensive SSD option. No I'm not expecting the majority of people to care (such as yourself), but I am only providing information that other people may find useful (Don't shoot the messenger). This to me seems like Sony wants people to order SSDs when configuring a machine from them to get the fastest possible speed.
Plus the lady told me afterwards that putting in your own SSD may potentially void your warranty.

So really it's not in the marketing to 'force' the customer to chose but instead persuades them that to get the fastest SSD you're going to have to use Sony's option.

Here's some marketing on Sony Japan's website.


Now it is comparing ''Generation 3" SSDs with RAID to "Generation 2" SSDs with RAID), Now there's only been 3 generations of SATA as we all know. SATA II raid was used in the 2011 Sandy Bridge model if you wanted to know that.

Now I do not condone this sort of business behaviour, but remember sony is having financial problems too after reporting a huge loss. Link here. Thus I understand why they are doing this.
But like all companies it is planned obsolescence via incremental upgrades.

Sure it tells you that Sony's SSDs are very roughly twice as fast as after market SATA III SSDs, this means sony is using SATA III with raid 0.
However people only get SATA II speeds with their after market SSDs unless they sleep/log off the computer first, then the drive kicks into SATA III mode.
Which means yes the laptop itself supports SATA III but Sony chooses to limit it at uefi level since it's not a driver issue.

Sony may or may not add ''official'' sata III support, but we're going to have to wait for that either way. Plus ehrn Sony is doing their next refresh on the Vaio, maybe SATA III support will be on those machines, who knows at the moment.

But I'd say what is most likely is that a Modder on this forum will release a BIOS that should hopefully enable SATA III, that project is still ongoing with the 2011 Model you can find that thread here. Since the 2011 model did have SATA III to begin with then Sony released a BIOS update and took SATA III away with it whilst improving other things such as battery life and bluetooth.

 

Guys,

I have tried all the methods, Sleep, Hybernate, Log off, all with the Optical drive disabled.
Nothing works.
I'm still on 3GB speed when I checked the Intel Rapid Storage & CrystalDiskmark.

Any more ideas?

Thanks.

 

Are you on the latest version of the bios and latest intel storage drivers? Is your system the 13 or 15?

 

Yes, latest BIOS version.
Latest Intel Storage Drivers (11.1.3.1001).
I'm using the S13 Premium.

Thanks.

 

I guess Sony really did lock it down at BIOS level since it's a non driver issue.
You and the other modder are awesome for modifying the BIOS for the overclocking of the GPU.
Could you possibly see whether you can unlock the advanced menu inside of this bios?
Maybe the SATA III settings are in there. Unless you've already looked.

@Jlrosine Want more proof regarding Sony's SSD being SATA III, I'll quote from somebody else from the owner's and I provided the proof you wanted here

 

I'm not defending them at all, I just think that before you accuse them you should have more facts as to why they don't enable sata III for all SSDs. It's quite possible that they saw bugs and sata III generated more support requests than they would like, I don't know.

BTW, I never said they didn't have sata III enabled on their own drives, I never said sata III wasn't faster and never said that everyone else wasn't getting sata II speeds, read all of my posts please. We are fighting the same battle here .

Maybe you are 100% correct, I'm just slower to accuse/judge. I guess I live in the innocent until proven guilty world, and I still see potential reasons why they might only enable it for drives that they have complete QA control over.

Make sense?

 

Actually I did try to have a look.
Currently try to learn on how to.
But the thing about hacking the advanced menu seems more risky than just modifying the VBIOS.
I did wrongly modify the VBIOS on my first try, but luckily I can still use the Intel HD4000 and reflash it back to a working VBIOS.

 

I provided as much facts that are publicly available, in fact if I went deeper it would be against Sony's (plus many others) corporate interests.
My accusations are based around what Sony's competitors are doing. I firstly compared other manufactures and how they choose to implement SATA III. E.g. Lenovo sells SSDs in their configurator too albeit hideously expensive, but they still leave SATA III open for users to use.

HP they implemented SATA III on ivy bridge albeit weirdly check the HP section of this site. Some people have upgraded to Samsung SSDs and well got sata III speeds if they didn't use the msata ports - something like that.

Heck even Apple doesn't limit SATA III.

I don't have much info on dell, I don't want to wade through millions of pages on the Dell section. I'll assume that they left sata III open as apparently they use Samsung's PM830 drives.

Yes I agree some manufactures like to control SSDs (within their rights) as many people are having SSDs with firmware issues (Sandforce I'm looking at you here) that gives blue screens and to give the end users a good experience so they would only use SSDs that were tested by them to work properly. I could understand this, but not when manufactures price their SSDs too high.

However Every manufacture uses the same mobile chipset from Intel and thus shouldn't have any bugs with SATA III, if there are any bugs it's usually intel's problem, remember Sandy Bridge and its Cougar Point chipset flaw I know it was for desktop platforms but it demonstrated that no manufacturer was immune from this.

However Sony is not alone, apparently Toshiba does the same thing in limiting drives to SATA II via bios ( mod pointed this out). Heck I'd give Toshiba as much stick.

I judge on a case by case basis, I'm not very quick to accuse either, It took a few days of investigating.

Yes Innocent until proven guilty, but in this case it's a very fine line to guilty in my opinion, only because they don't advertise SATA III support for any other drives that's not their own.

------------------------------------------
Anyhow personally I'd Like SATA III to be enabled as I'm fairly likely to add an SSD when the drives hit 0.25US$/GB - now using Moore's Law (very roughly) that should be around in 2-3 years time since SSDs are currently selling 0.80US$/GB (cheapest ones I presume).
And well instead of getting a new laptop at that point I thought adding an SSD would give me a huge performance boost by then.

You're a star, you've only modified vbios by accident - that's amazing. I think you should try and ask for some tips from pyr0 since he is working on getting SATA III back onto the 2011 models, plus he has already unlocked the advance menu on the 2011 ones. Try not brick your own Vaio - you needn't go that far. If only Sony had dual bios like gigabyte.

 

Hahah..
The power of internet.

Yeah, probably will ask the Pro(pyr0) later.

Thanks.

 

Just a thought, do you think SATA3 will be enabled if you install the single SSD as a RAID 0 drive and setup windows from there? I'm going to try this tonite after work if there's a chance it might work.

 

I'm not following you, I would guess you would need 2 drives in order to setup a raid array...yes? I would think the bios/firmware wouldn't allow it otherwise.

I had another thought, I wonder if putting the SSD on the original optical drive sata cable would auto enable sata III, I haven't tried that one yet.

 

I was reading in this another thread that regardless of RAID configuration, Sony's RAID offering is a single physical drive. Unless it's some proprietory technology which houses 2 electrically separate drives in 1 physical body?!?!

 

Well I think you should give it a shot and let us know how it goes . Although I think the raid setup would still need to be in bios right?

 

Yup, will do that and feedback.

 

Thats how new S series Samsung 830 SSD looks like.
Pictures taken of my S15.


My thoughts.

Since i flashed several different bioses ( currently running 950/1000mhz 640M LE bios) which were taken from HDD S13. I had no difference when i flashed it to my SSD S15.
So as a conclusion we could say that Sata2/sata2 mode is not defined in bios.
It must be some other factor which is limiting you guys getting sata3 speeds.

On bootup i can run raid bios and configure my raid 0 from there. Raid bios and diskpart both read SSD as 2x 64GB.
SSD chips and controller are identical to samsung 830 series. But PCB layout looks physically different from Samsung 830 128GB SSD. So its very likely indeed 2x64GB SSD conversion to a single PCB.

 

I'm going to assume that the cable connects to somewhere else on the board where some magic happens, does the mother board still have the connector for the normal sata port/cable?

The SATA III stuff may or may not be defined at a BIOS level, but since we don't know much about it at the moment we cannot say. But I'm assuming that it is at bios level judging on what happened on the 2011 model. It may be in the uefi bit. I thought the BIOS were the same across all models - I could be wrong though.

I don't think the cable is limiting as some people got SATA III speeds after sleeping/loging off their machine, and the Intel drivers are the same on all manufactures and thus if it was a driver problem it wouldn't just affect Sony.

Everyone is practically using Samsung's PM830 SSDs since they're fast and have no firmware/controller issues (like OCZ and their sandforce controllers).
Plus they're quite competitive on the market.

What I don't get with Sony is that they always seem to release a proprietary connector for everything, PS Vita, I didn't see what was wrong with the mini USB connector again same with their cybershot cameras.

 

Someone should try clean install windows withouth any sony drivers included and test the speed then. It may be, that sony integrated some limit in to their drivers.
This would explain the after sleep sata3 speeds as perhaps this limit is not reloaded after sleep.

 

I'm seeing SATA 6Gb/s speeds 100% of the time after sleeping the computer - those of you who aren't, have you tried:

- disabling optical drive in bios (not just device manager)
- bending sata cable so that it doesnt lie flush to metal ssd (this happened unintentionally during installation with mine, may be a physical factor)

 

Well Amal77 says he can't get SATA III speeds with his Crucial M4, I don't know if he's tried an install without the sony drivers though. However I've never heard of Intel RST limiting speeds.

 

You guys have to understand, even we are using the same BIOS, it doesn't mean it works the same way to the rest.

When I MOD the BIOS for the GT640M LE, I found 2 modules of VBIOS.
Usually most BIOS only have 1 modules of VBIOS.
My assumptions is that 1 modules is for the 1GB edition, and another one is for the 2GB edition of GT640M LE.

So, there is still a possibility that the SATA 3 is limited by the BIOS.
Means that if it detect a different setup or hardware other than it should, then it'll automatically goes back to SATA 2.

Same goes for the VBIOS, it probably detects the type of model and automatically decide which VBIOS it will use.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Thats possibly very true yes.

 

I'm keeping a careful look on this thread
Currently replaced my entry HDD with Samsung 830 SSD (+ clean install) and I'm already blown away by the speed difference in boot time and overall response.
How much better it gets when we find the SATA-III catch...

... to be continued...

 

^ not going to be much of a humanly-noticeable speed difference, except when benchmarking the SSD.

 

It doesn't get any better. SATA II and SATA III have absolutely no real world differences. I had a SATA III Crucial M4 in my previous laptop and desktop and it felt exactly just as fast as my S13A with SATA II SSD speeds.

The only way you would even notice the difference is through benchmarks or unless you have multiple 4+ drive RAID 10 arrays sitting around transferring tons of data to your laptop.

 

An update from my side.
I can confirm (what was mentioned by someone) that when you DISABLE the optical device and start your laptop from "Sleep", then SATA-III is active for my SSD. When I enable the optical again (in BIOS), then everything remains SATA-II.
I've attached the screenshots from Intel's Mgt tool.

• (Re)Start/boot with/without optical (SATA-2)
  
• Resume from standby with optical (SATA-2)
  
• Resume from standby without optical (SATA-3)
  

My system: S13P (SVS13A), latest BIOS and latest downloaded Intel drivers (from Sony download page!!).
I've installed Windows 7 from scratch (UEFI boot). This is actually I can suggest to everybody who knows how to do it. It is amazing faster in boot time and Windows itself... well... finally rid-off that crap/bloatware (even some installed stuff that cannot be used perfectly in EU as well as the fact I do not own any PS3 neither I need any interfacing to a Sony device... so gone are the drivers/patches for this stuff)

 

To be honest, I'm about ready to give up on the sata III thing, only because I don't think I'll see much difference in performance. I do think I'd notice when running virtual machines, but only slightly.

I'm much more concerned with the trackpad. I picked up a samsung series 7 to compare trackpad gestures, the ELAN in the samsung I think is better than the synaptics in the Sony. If I could just get back/forward gestures working on the Sony within windows explorer, I think I'd be happy. It drives me nuts that it works everywhere else, but not in windows explorer.

 

Doesn't work with 2011 Vaio SA, w/ Crucial M4. Optical Drive disabled and resume from sleep. Intel RST driver version is 10.8 though, Intel doesn't seem to officially have 11.2 drivers on their website?

 

Taking my cue from Darkimmortal I disabled the optical drive. Booted win7 (Sony bloat version), and checked SSD status - 3Gb/s. Put the S15 to sleep and woke it up - 6Gb/s. Benched with AS SSD and everything looks good

 

Edit:
Note to self: read the thread before commenting............

 

It doesn't work with my 2011 SB + OCZ Vertex 4 too. My PC always using latest firmwares and drivers, and I still wonder why Sony's disable the SATA 3 function.

 

So, to use 6 Gbps, you have to give up optical drive.
Which means you may have to give up extra hard drive (in optical enclosure) to have 6 Gbps.
It is not worth for me.

 

That's correct, with that second sata port enabled, you won't get 6Gbps.

I will say though, I don't notice any difference between my x220 running 6Gbps and the Sony S15 at 3Gbps. I'm a performance nut (compiling visual studio projects, running VMs etc) and still can't tell.

The big performance gain in SSDs came from AHCI/NCQ on even sata II.

 

The Intel HM77 chipset in VAIO S motherboard supports SATA 3 by default, but I guess VAIO S BIOS is limiting it for somehow (maybe a bug or by Sony), I had old VAIO (2010), and SATA 3 was enabled by default.
We should let Sony know about this issue, they may release a BIOS update.

 

..or maybe they'll release a retroactive license-agreement, that includes a pledge not to sue them for any reason, that insists Sony is free to do whatever they want.

Has happened before.

 

I've got the SVS1511C5E and upgraded with a Samsung 830 512Gb drive. Speed is not really my problem, although it runs in Sata2 mode. My main problem is that with a cold boot, the drive does not seem to get recognised the first few times.

Bios is in UEFI mode, and I have to physically switch the machine on and off a few times before it detects the drive and boots. I've been using the drive for about a week now, and the problem started occurring since last weekend. Anyone else have this issue?

I did run the Samsung Magician tool; could it be that this has broken something? The drive did not display this behaviour at first; it only started about 3 days ago.

I also have a Vertex 4 512 Gb which is not detected at all by the laptop. It does not even show up in the Bios (no drive detected). Any ideas?

By the way: The Sleep workaround with optical drive disabled works for me too: After wakeup it runs @ 6Gb/s.

 

I assume you have run the sony bios update tool and you are at the latest bios?

I don't have any issues with it detecting my 830, I had the 830 in for a few weeks with no hiccups like that.

 

Hi jlrosine,

There is no update available, as far as I can tell. Where do I get this bios update tool? Vaio Care reports that the system is completely up to date.

Many thanks in advance!

 

EDIT: Correction, you need to use the "bios update utility" from the downloads. Does your model have that?

 

Nope... No bios update utility is available.

Just had a chat with Sony Support. This person told me that warranty on the laptop is voided as soon as you replace the harddrive?!? Is this true???

 

Go here > Sony eSupport - SVS1511CFXB - Support

Click on the download tab > bios > download the bios update utility.

Sony support/warranty blows, just like their removing sata 3, among other issues. I have a support ticket with them and they never called back...they just ignore you until you go away.

If you want good support and a little better product, buy a lenovo . Just my opinion of course.

 

I have a different model... I have the SVS1511C5E, so that Bios update does not apply to my machine. There honestly is no update available at the moment...

 

Sorry about that...didn't notice their product page sent me to a different model. Pretty sweet they say they can't find your model number. Is it on a different support page, non US?