Disk Parameter Tuning Utility?

[Bob Fulks <bfulks@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Slightly off topic but perhaps of general interest.

I recently was running some benchmarks on the performance of TS4.0 
and TS2000i and discovered several computer settings that were not 
optimum:

   > On an HP Pavilion 8550C Win98 machine, the Device
     Manager:Properties:Settings panel had DMA unchecked.
     I checked it and the disk transfer rate increased
     from 5 to 13 MB/sec and a TradeStation benchmark
     improved the optimization speed by almost a factor
     of two. (Somewhat surprising for a commercial machine, 
     I would think.)

   > On a custom built Win2000 machine, the Device
     Manager:Disk Drives:Disk Properties panel had Write
     Cache enabled but the write cache was not enabled
     in the BIOS. I made them consistent and the disk
     write performance went from 8 to 23 MB/sec and the
     TradeStation benchmark was again a factor of two
     faster.

All of this makes me wonder what other settings on my various 
machines are not optimum - hence my question:

Does anyone know of a utility program that can analyze your machine 
to see if all of the various settings are correct? (I have done some 
searching but have not located such a thing.)

Alternately, is there some web site reference that discusses what the 
proper settings are?

Thanks.

Bob Fulks