Thinkpads Forum

I've recently gotten a used T61p from eBay. It's working fine. I noticed that the SSD seems to run pretty fast -- faster than on the nearly identical T61p that I replaced with this one.

I'm suspecting that the previous owner (not available) may have modded the BIOS with the Middleton mod that "unlocks" the SATA II capability of this machine.

How can I verify this? The BIOS screen shows v. 2.29. I wasn't sure if Middleton's mod would be reflected in the BIOS i.d. or not.

Note: I'm *not* trying to provoke a discussion of the pros and cons of applying a modded BIOS update.

You can use a program called hdtune to test the read and write performance. Assuming your ssd can read above sata I speeds, you should get over 150 mb/s.

@brchan: Thanks for your helpful reply. I did as you suggested and am getting these results from HD Tune Pro 5.6:

READ:

Minimum: 171.7 MB/s
Maximum: 197.2 MB/s
Average: 174.1 MB/s
Access Time: 0.159 ms
Burst Rate: 107.5 MB/s

Also, I used AIDA64 Extreme (trial version) and was able to check the SLIC version, which is reported as v.2.1.

So I'm thinking I am getting SATA II performance, which must mean the stock BIOS was modded by a previous owner. Cool with me.

If you have those SATA speeds and Slic2.1 in BIOS, you definitely have M's BIOS.

RealBlackStuff wrote:If you have those SATA speeds and Slic2.1 in BIOS, you definitely have M's BIOS.

That's good news. If it were a nearly new machine or one I had dropped a ton of cash into, I might be miffed. In this case, I'm happy since I was planning to mod it anyway. Now I don't have to go through the anxiety* of any BIOS update, but especially a modded one I pulled from a link on a forum**.

*admittedly, sort of thrilling

**Admittedly, the guy who goes by "Middleton" knows what he's doing. If I had those skills, I think I'd sign my work.

brchan wrote:You can use a program called hdtune to test the read and write performance. Assuming your ssd can read above sata I speeds, you should get over 150 mb/s.

Is the 150 an average or that is a level it should be able to exceed?

IMAKYA wrote: Is the 150 an average or that is a level it should be able to exceed?

Exceed.

Most decent SSDs will run at 230-270 Mbps reads on these machines - when measured by CDM -while the writes are far more generation-dependable.

IMAKYA wrote:Is the 150 an average or that is a level it should be able to exceed?

Exceed.

With the stock Lenovo BIOS, 150 is your limit because it's locked at SATA I speed (150 MB/sec).

Middleton BIOS unlocks SATA II speed (300MB/sec max), so you can experience > 200MB/sec with a fast SSD.

I am using a Samsung 850 EVO. My speeds are 176 Mb/s (top) and 112 Mb/s (average).
Is something wrong? I am sure I installed the BIOS properly as got no error messages and it is much zipper. Is the EVO just a slower SSD?

IMAKYA wrote:I am using a Samsung 850 EVO. My speeds are 176 Mb/s (top) and 112 Mb/s (average).
Is something wrong? I am sure I installed the BIOS properly as got no error messages and it is much zipper. Is the EVO just a slower SSD?

With Middleton you should see 250-280mb read speeds and 230-250mb write speeds with a Samsung EVO drive.

Middleton Bios is 2.29

BIOS is fine.

The SSD isn't correctly set up/tweaked, or there's something wrong with it.