Thinkpads Forum

I'm considering an X61/T. My question was, is there anyway to get USB 3.0 hard disk to work at native speeds with it through some sort of upgrade? I found some old threads about the subject but nothing conclusive. Thanks.

A quick Google search doesn't find any PC Card / Cardbus USB3 cards - the results are all ExpressCards. So there's probably no easy way to add USB3 to an X61.
Theoretically, you could try finding a miniPCIe USB3 controller card and wire it to an external port somewhere.

Theoretically, you could try finding a miniPCIe USB3 controller card and wire it to an external port somewhere.

The best place for an external port is the CardBus slot, but there's still the question of whether the port will fit or not.
Take this card for example: http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/Perip ... X-7202.HTM

Manual Here: http://www.commell.com.tw/Download/Manu ... al_v11.pdf

The cables might fit inside the X61T chassis, and the power cable could be modded to plug to a USB 2.0 port to provide extra +5v. The big challenge is to fit the board that contains the actual USB 3.0 port connectors into the Cardbus slot.

j

The USB3 problem has been diagnosed, dissected and solved by dr_st here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=108201

That's not quite the problem at hand, RBS. The problem here is that X61T does not have an ExpressCard slot at all...

Here's a PCMCIA to EXPRESS adapter: http://sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=1088

Unfortunately, they only work for USB-based ExpressCards (USB2). None of the USB3 controllers, which are naturally PCIe-based, will work through them.

And even if someone makes a native CardBus USB 3.0 card, it's going to max out well bellow the 133 megabytes/sec bandwidth of CardBus.