Increase the performance of your SATA disk drive

Nowadays, SATA hard disk drives are very common. They offer a series of advantages compared to older models, one of them being the improved performance. Windows Vista not only offers built-in support for SATA hard disks, but it also allows you to squeeze a little more performance from them.
So... how do you increase the performance of your SATA hard disk?
First, go to Control Panel, and type "device" in the upper right search box. The first search result should be Device Manager.

Click on this option and the Device Manager window will open. Go to Disk Drives and select the SATA hard disk you want to speed up.

Right click on it and select Properties. The Device Properties window will open. Here, go to the Policies tab, check the Enable advanced performance option and click on OK.

Windows Vista will now improve the performance of your SATA hard disk by enhancing write caching.
NOTE: In order to make these changes, your user needs to be an administrator. If your computer does not have a backup power supply such as an UPS(Uninterruptible power supply) it is not advisable to enable this option. I personally had issues with data corruption on computers without an UPS. It is better to be safe than sorry.
If you have an UPS or a laptop with a working battery, then enabling this option does not put your data at risk.