If you are using Vista, and you have an external drive that you keep connected permanently, you can speed up the drive significantly by enabling write caching. By default, write caching is disabled since it makes it safer for you to quickly disconnect the drive without using the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in the system tray. But if you don't disconnect the drive, or you plan on using the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon, you should enable write caching to get the faster drive performance. Here's how:

1 - Type "Device Manager" (without the quotes) into the Start Menu and hit Enter.

2 - This will bring up a list of all devices. Scroll down to the external drive and double click on it. This will open up the Properties window for that drive.

3 - Select the "Policies" tab and choose the "Optimize for Performance" radio button. Then click OK.

4 - You'll need to reboot for the new policy to take effect. But once you do, you'll notice a significant speed increase when writing to this drive.