Well I took the step 1 last year (2006) and I studied my brains out but I got a 250 score on the test. These things I believe are the key to doing well. You must go throught the first aid atleast twice. Doing this will help you remember where everything is. I used to do 50 Kaplan Q bank questions every afternoon and then go through all the answers (right or wrong). If I missed a question I would study that topic in Robbins, Netter, etc until I had relearned what I had forgotten. I also read BRS path and BRS Phys once during this time. For pharm I bought the book "Hardcore Pharmacology" which was an excellent review of pharm and I went through that once. I also read pretest pharmacology and most of pretest physiology. The pretest books help a lot. Pretest pathology was something I used during classes and it is really good. Finally one thing that I think that really helped was on the University of Utah website there are a ton of flashcards that go over everything in first aid. There are like 40 topics and I went through one or two of these every morning when I got up. As far as hours go I got up at 8am everyday and studied till noon, took an hour off for lunch then, did questions all afternoon. At night I took an hour off for dinner and then studied till like 10:30-11 everynight. Forget about weekends, and social events for these four weeks. Oh and last thing, I think this is very important. You need to exercise atleast 3 times a week if not more. This helps for numerous reasons. It decreases your stress significantly and increases blood flow to your brain which energizes you to keep studying when you get sick of it! When you get tired of studying and your head hurts, go for a 20 minute run. This also helps to build up your endurance which you need when the test comes around because the test is 7 hours straight and trust me if you have been running consistently you will have no issues with stamina during the real deal. Also three or four days before the real test, take the online full lentgh simulated test offered by Kaplan. It builds your endurance and is a good predictor of how you will do with time. I didn't do any of the NBME tests that you have to pay for and I did fine. Well good luck to you and I hope you get the same or better on step1.
