Tuning

You can change device parameters on your system to improve performance. For instance, there are tools such as hdparm which will allow you to measure the performance of your hard drive along with options to allow you to change performance parameters.

bash-2.05b# hdparm -tT /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.36 seconds =355.56 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  2.25 seconds = 28.44 MB/sec