Boost SATA Drive Performance

Enable SATA’s latest high-test features

Risk-takers can get a little hard drive performance boost by turning on two options in Vista that are disabled by default. In Device Manager, fi nd your hard drive (under Disk Drives), rightclick it, click Properties, then click the Policies tab. Select “Optimize for performance” and check both “Enable write caching on the disk” and “Enable advanced performance.” Be warned: With the latter two options turned on, you may risk losing data if you lose power or have a catastrophic crash, so make sure you use a universal power supply and run regular backups. The specific performance boost depends on the make and model of your drive; don’t expectthe moon.