ATA66 and ATA100 on same channel

[LuDaCriS66]

I've got a WD 800JB 8mb cache drive but I also have an ATA66 20GB Quantum drive on slave on the same channel. Does the rule that all drives will slow down to the slowest ATA rating still apply? Not that I think there would be much of a difference at all since drives never reach those speeds anyway.
but the ATA66 drive is just a backup drive anyway and technically I can just unplug it. The only thing that's keeping me from doing that is I don't want it to screw up my drive letters if keep unplugging and plugging it back in.

 

[Viper96720]

Test the WD with the other drive connected and disconnected. You can use atto to test it.
atto diskbench

 

[Sid59]

that theory of drives slowing down to the slowest speeds are now false. Just get a newer IDE cable and you'll be fine. A month ago, i added a WD120 to my secondary slave and checked my IDE devices. the hard drive and CD drive were running in DMA 2. Shut down and changed to the IDE cable that came with the hdd and now the hdd is running DMA 5 and CD Drive DMA2

 

[RyanVM]

On the same channel, yes the rule still applies. But as you said, it really doesn't make a difference anyways once you get to ATA66 and up.

 

[Lord Evermore]

On the same channel, no, the rule does not apply. It hasn't applied for years now. All chipsets since the Intel HX-era have had independent device timing.

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/conf_Timing.htm (This page has the exact same text as one of StorageReview's reference pages... because it's the same owner! So pay attention.)

ATA66 and ATA100 both use an 80-conductor 40-pin cable. If a 40-conductor cable was used then all devices would run at ATA33.

There should be no problem using both drives together. But depending on what devices you have, it'd make sense to put the slower drive onto the secondary channel with a CDROM. The only time you might notice any performance difference on the same cable is if you were transferring data between the drives, since the 8MB cache on the WD might mean copying from the WD to the Quantum is faster or slower than the other way around.