Hard Drives... do they slow down?

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Tempus

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Hey guys,
amature question for sure but we all have to learn right?
My question is I am thinking about getting the new WD SATA (raptor?) 36gb hard drive... now a friend of mine who got his BA in Comp Sci told me that if you have two hard drives spinning at different speeds they both slow down to the lowest rpm.
I'm wondering if this holds true.
I have a pata 120 seagate right now but want to add that sata... is that a waste of money due to the two different hard drive speeds (10,000 & 7,200)
Thanx in advance
 
Here's the deal, if you have 2 hard drives of different rotation speeds on the same IDE channel, your data will only travel as fast as your slowest device.

But since you'll have one SATA drive and one regular ATA drive, it should not effect you. Different paths for data to travel.

I do suggest, however, that to optimize your speed, you put your OS and regularly used proggys on the SATA and use the other drive for storage.
 
Thanx for the info guys
thats how i thought it worked but i just wanted to check with someone with more experience then myself
 
there are different types of IDE channels, ATA66, ATA100 and ATA133. some have a 40 pin connection and some have an 80 pin, the 80 pin is backward compatible with 40 pin (i think)
if you have the drives on different channels they will not affect each other, and if you have larger bandwith with the IDE cables that will make it even better still (i.e. if you have an ATA133 cable on an ATA100 channel)
 
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