>NT4, ultra scsi (3) 9gb drives, no raid
>thanks

I'd have to say that something is holding back the use of RAM as cache/buffers. It ought to be settable somewhere.
There may also be another issue of the motherboard/CPU capability to maximize L2 caching of RAM beyond xxMB. Is the machine designed as a file server (like a Proliant or such)?

And I'd doubt that the basic SNAP Server would outdo this configuration.