Thinkpads Forum

I recently picked up a 128GB Crucial M4 for a really good deal, and am planning on installing it in place of the WD spinning platter drive currently installed in my T400. I've got switchable graphics, and as such am still on BIOS version 3.18 (7U*) on account of Lenovo's continuing incompetence at fixing the graphical corruption that occurs in subsequent versions of the BIOS when discrete graphics are in use.

Now, just to make sure I've got all my bases covered before installing, I've been looking into whether or not the BIOS should be updated, since this machine wasn't originally configured with a SSD installed. Aside from a frustratingly nondescript mention of "CPU microcode updated" in one of the more recent BIOS releases (updated to do what? Does this provide performance gains? Extend battery life? Security fix?), there doesn't seem to be anything related.

I just wanted to check with you fine people here to see if anyone else has made a similar upgrade and can warn of any "gotchas" that need addressing, BIOS-related or otherwise. Thanks!

My .02c is don't update if you are not under warranty as there are stories of bricked ThinkPads after BIOS updates.

I can't think of any BIOS update benefit for SSD's.

Brad

Thanks for the advice. I've been out of warranty for a while, and I also generally don't update BIOSes unless there's a very specific fix to a problem I'm having, and even then I'm a little suspicious--I update to 3.19 over a year ago (closer to two?) and had the graphical issues with the discrete chip, then updated to the next version that claimed to fix the problem (it didn't) before going back to 3.18 with no problems, thankfully.

Like I said, I didn't think there was anything in the new BIOS versions that would affect SSD use, but thought I'd check just in case.

I think there is no need to update BIOS for faster SSD, but since I have T500 + Crucial M4, I strongly recommend to update the SSD to the latest firmware and the add Intel RST driver.