W520 - various SSD issues

[ThorsHammer]

This thread has been dead for months.  Lenovo SSD support sucks.

[Bripet3]

Just brought a W520 and looking to put in a SSD. Already disappointed with lenovo that for whatever reason their systems don't fully support SSD's using the sata III interface.

Don't build and sell laptops which don't fully support and follow the standards!!!

Any SATA III hardrive, SSD or mechanical should work in any laptop you sell with SATA III

Why do you have such problems? Please enlighten your customers as to why your laptops don't fully support all SSD's or is it the SSD manufactures who are to blame?

Either Lenovo or several SSD manufactures are not building products which fully support the universal SATA interface. Please sort it or risk loosing many unhappy customers to other rival brands.

[huberth]

Situation: The Lenovo W520 BIOS 1.30 update still has not resolved the 40 second startup delay when you are using an Intel 510 SATA III SSD.

Additional Information:  During a warm-boot (in start-up diagnostics mode) the following message is displayed for about 40 seconds:

"ThinkVantage Active Protection sensor diagnostics start  /"

This seems to indicate that the BIOS is waiting for the hard drive to spin down, not realizing that it is dealing with an SSD.

Solution: An easy fix would be to allow us to turn off the ThinkVantage Active Protection (aka. "Air Bag") in BIOS.

[thitiv]

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Bripet3 wrote:

Just brought a W520 and looking to put in a SSD. Already disappointed with lenovo that for whatever reason their systems don't fully support SSD's using the sata III interface.

Don't build and sell laptops which don't fully support and follow the standards!!!

Any SATA III hardrive, SSD or mechanical should work in any laptop you sell with SATA III

Why do you have such problems? Please enlighten your customers as to why your laptops don't fully support all SSD's or is it the SSD manufactures who are to blame?

Either Lenovo or several SSD manufactures are not building products which fully support the universal SATA interface. Please sort it or risk loosing many unhappy customers to other rival brands.

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I see it differently and agree with you in the last sentence: SSD manufacturers do not fully follow industry standards for hard drives

[huberth]

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thitiv wrote:

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Bripet3 wrote:

Just brought a W520 and looking to put in a SSD. Already disappointed with lenovo that for whatever reason their systems don't fully support SSD's using the sata III interface.

Don't build and sell laptops which don't fully support and follow the standards!!!

Any SATA III hardrive, SSD or mechanical should work in any laptop you sell with SATA III

Why do you have such problems? Please enlighten your customers as to why your laptops don't fully support all SSD's or is it the SSD manufactures who are to blame?

Either Lenovo or several SSD manufactures are not building products which fully support the universal SATA interface. Please sort it or risk loosing many unhappy customers to other rival brands.

---

I see it differently and agree with you in the last sentence: SSD manufacturers do not fully follow industry standards for hard drives

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Whatever the case may be - it is something that can be easyly fixed by Lenovo, if there is an intention to do so.

[wditters]

Small update:

Lenovo's USER / MASTER password functionality is INCOMPATIBLE with any new generation SATA3 Sandforce SSD's.

I have tested and found an issue with

- OCZ Vertex 3 240Gb

- Kingston HyperX SSD 240Gb

- OWX Mercury Pro 6G 240Gb

In all cases the password was set, correctly confirmed, but resulted in a bricked drive after the 1st reboot nevertheless. Password entry was not accepted.

I had the misfortune to set both USER and MASTER passwords on the OCZ but thankfully OCZ replaced it. In all other cases, the drive was locked using the USER password, but that password could luckily be cleared by using HDDErase 4.0  (bootable floppy, IDE mode legacy)

[Jimm98y]

Has anyone already tried the newest Samsung 830 ssd?

[techscotty]

holy cow, not good

[huberth]

Any news?

[techscotty]

Are you folks saying that the main harddrive bay doesn't run at SATA III ??

Or only with some SSD's ?

And the Ultrabay runs at SATA III and works with all SSD's ??

Curious....

I have heard a few peeps say they're Crucial M4 runs fine.

But maybe its just at SATA II speed ?

Hmmmmm