To speed up your hard disk speed we need to configure a special buffer in the computer's memory in order to enable it to better deal with interrupts made from the disk.

This tip is only recommended if you have 256MB RAM or higher.

Follow the next steps:
 

1. Click Start -> Run and type sysedit to open the System Configuration Editor (see picture 1).
    
2. Expand the system.ini file window.
   
   

   Picture 1

3. Scroll down almost to the end of the file till you find a line called [386enh].
    
4. Press Enter to make one blank line, and in that line type: Irq14=4096.
   
   Note: This line is CASE SENSITIVE !!!
    
5. Click on the File menu, then choose Save.
    
6. The modifications you made will be in effect after you reboot your PC.

Update: The most speed improvement is visible with IDE drives, however there are reports that this tweak also does good for SCSI disks. In any case, it won't harm your system, so why not try it yourself and let me know what you find.