In a word, no. The hard drive has a physical limitation with rpm speed, seek time, and buffer (all things that affect how fast it finds what you want).
The jumper setting is because the computer looks for a master and a slave for items that are on the same IDE cable. I don't believe that you have to boot off of the master, but one has to be set. If there are two masters on one IDE cable, I believe the computer won't be able to boot. Same if there are two slaves on the same IDE cable.