We've found these tools
http://scsirastools.sourceforge.net/ and
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/ (for seagate drives)
to check the settings of scsi disks and to change settings for seagate
drives.
What are people using for IDE disks?
Are you all using hdparm on linux
http://freshmeat.net/projects/hdparm/?topic_id=146%2C861
or are there other tools?