"See man hdparm for complete details and cautions."
"Some Linux distributions aren't optimized for your specific
system, so tweaks are necessary. I run RedHat 6.1, and here is how
I sped up my disk speed by enabling 32-bit I/O and DMA on my
system."
"The turning on/off of the 32-bit I/O and DMA has to be done by
root with all root privileges. I su - and query my current settings
and time the harddrive current performance..."