7200rpm / 5400rpm HD's on same cable.

Would the slower speed of a 5400rpm slave drive affect the throughput of a 7200rpm master drive on the same cable?

If not is it still worthwhile moving the pagefile (Windows XP) over to the slower drive (I've 2.5Gb RAM and a .5GB swapfile)?

Plan is to install a Linux distro on the slower drive but won't bother if it'll affect system performance.

 

Its generally not a question of drive speed. Its more a question of the Transfer Mode supported by the drive [ATA 66/100/PIO etc.].

If you mix 2 drives of different transfer modes on a single cable, normally the faster mode drive steps down to the lower mode so that both drives are using the same transfer mode.

This has been corrected in SATA as their is always one & only one drive connected to the SATA cable enabling different drives to perform as efficiently as possible in this kind of situation.

 

This held some credibility prior to the advent of 80 wire IDE cables but it's no longer true with regard to transfer mode and I hate to say it but 80 wire cables have been around for quite some time. Steve already answered the question about spindle speed.

 

Thanks for the feedback guys.

After installing the 2nd drive Device manager reports the 7200's Current Transfer Mode is Ultra DMA Mode 6 whereas the 5400 is showing as Ultra DMA Mode 5.

The drives are PATA and I'm using Windows XP SP3. Can I trust Device manager or are both drives using UDMA5?

I guess I'll have to dig out some benchmarking tools.

Just seen Rocksters Post, Thanks for all the help guys.

 

Just wasn't sure whether to trust Device Manage Steve, but Rockster2U's post cleared up the confusion.

 

Throw in the drive electronics & motherboard in the soup & everything becomes muddy. 40/80 connector cable is not the only culprit over here.