Will the SATA-II modded bios show any improvement with a 5400RPM drive?
Is it safe to install it?
Has any1 ever had a problem with it?

Thx!!

Definitely not!

Cheers,

Bill B.

thanks!
Then if there is no advantage of installing it, then why bother creating and patching it?

Because it can provide a massive improvement for drives that don't suck (i.e. SSDs!).

what about a 7200rpm?

Nope.

See above: SSDs.

If your 7200rpm drive supports SATA II speeds you should see a modest improvement. The modified BIOS increased my sequential read/write benchmarks by about 10mb/s.

My drive: Seagate Momentus 7200 500GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s 16MB Cache 2.5 Inch Internal NB Hard Drive ST9500420AS

Similar results have been posted by others: http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/459591-t61-x61-sata-ii-1-5-gb-s-cap-willing-pay-solution-22.html#post6544071

Of course, an SSD will provide far better results.

To clarify: you'd likely only notice a difference with a traditional disk during absolute peak sequential read speeds -- random reads/writes and sequential writes won't get anywhere near the cap. Sequential reads might (might!), but even then it's unlikely you'd notice a difference.

Any and every BIOS update carries the risk of bricking the board if something goes haywire.

That being said, I trust Middleton's modded BIOS as much as I would an official Lenovo one.

Pretty much. I've flashed modified BIOSes on tons of machines, and I've never bricked one doing so. Don't pull the AC and the battery mid way through the flash and you'll be fine.

... and don't flash the BIOS from inside Windows 7 -- there are too many reports of catastrophic failure when flashing BIOS from Windows 7. However, no problem doing it from Windows XP.

I wouldn't even do that!

The safest option is using the dedicated boot disks that they give you. I never, ever, ever trust user-space flashing. I want as little as possible between the flash code and the hardware.

WoW, I see vastly and completely opposing opinions on this subject, so let me chime in. I'll also add that many consider me an expert, I make no such claim, but I have flashed middletons bios on close to 100 systems in the past 6 months, and I have experienced the worst possible result.

1st issue: as George states, I too trust middleton's bios. It's a genuine lenovo bios with some very minor modifications, so it's entirely safe to use as long as it installs properly.

2nd issue: Windows XP is probably the worst OS to install from. A 32bit vista or seven would be a better option, they are more stable and less chance of a BSOD, which will kill your board and I have seen a bios flash cause BSOD on winXP more then once.

3rd issue: The bootable cdrom disc is a poor design. It has no prevision for a system being unstable. If I was designing it it would have a prompt with a warning saying something like... "Continue only if your system appears stable and you're not experiencing abnormal disc read activity". I've read opinions that it's safer to flash from a boot disc and did so, the boot disc loaded, the drive made some abnormal clicking and repeated scanning noises, obviously having read errors and retried many times, but dispite these errors it continued to destroy my bios just like a soldier marching into cannon fire as ordered, knowing full well certain death would follow. Basically if you have a perfect optical drive, and a perfectly burned disc, then it may be a safe option, but I prefer to flash from a STABLE running operating system. WinXP will do, but I prefer vista or seven.

One thing you NEVER want to do is flash a freshly built system, that's foolish, always use it for days/weeks. When I build a system, I always flash the board before I pull it from the donor machine (if possible), if not, I run the machine for a few days to make sure it's stable before flashing the bios. Also, if I'm going to destroy a board, I'd rather have it happen before I build the system, not after. In the former, I'm out a board, in the latter I'm out a board and a huge amount of time and effort.

In regards to harddrive performance, you will have improvement on any SATA2 harddrive, be it 7200 or 5400rpm, but you probably won't "feel" the difference. The driver RPM speed isn't the only factor when it comes to performance, some people even prefer the 5400rpm drives. Some draw less power and can be a better choice for a portable computer, can take less time to spin up, use less battery, and can even outlast the high speed drive. The rpm rating doesn't effect the speed of data transfer, it's just the rotation speed. Just as you cannot judge a cars performance by how fast the engine revs, you can't judge a drive by how fast the disc spins.

My ideal setup would be an SSD for primary, and a good 5400rpm drive in the ultrabay for storage.

Please understand I'm not trying to contradict anyone's opinion, I respect everyone here and their opinions are valid as much as mine, I'm just telling you what I've experienced and how I feel on the subject, but if you want to cut through all the fluff and get to the core of the matter, then I'll tell you this...

If you're not prepared to accept the possibility of destroying your board, then don't flash your bios!!!


I don't think anyone will disagree with that opinion.

Returning to the first posting in this thread ... Given your stated configuration, changing that 5400RPM drive to a 7200RPM drive (or an SSD) is by far the single most beneficial change you can make to experience a palpable increase in speed. [Compared to that improvement, SATA-I vs. SATA-II won't register even a blip on the radar.]