I have a 80 GB 7200 RPM drive in my XP machine. I've recently come into
possesition of an older (3 years) 40 GB 5400 RPM Maxtor drive.

I'm considering putting the 5400 RPM drive in the box as a slave drive.

My "dumb XXX" question is: Can I mix the 2 different drive speeds on the same
IDE cable?

In the not too distant past, I had tried installing a 7200 RPM drive into an
older (5+ years) Dell box. At the time the BIOS wouldn't recognize the 7200
RPM drive and I had to revert to a 5400 RPM drive.

Any suggestions?

Tom Conlon

Report this post to a moderator

You can freely mix drive rotational speeds in either direction on ANY
machine.

Whatever happened "in the not too distant past", it had NOTHING to do
with drive rotational speeds. I'm not questioning your statement that
the BIOS wouldn't recognize the drive, but rotational speed was not, and
had nothing to do with, the reason for that. [the most likely reason was
simply the capacity (size) of the drive]

Similarly, you can mix data transfer rates (ATA/66, ATA/100, ATA/133,
etc.) without restriction, although the computer may end up operating
the drive below it's maximum speed for any of several reasons. But all
drives are fully backwards compatible all the way to very slow PIO
modes, thus there are no issues in mixing different speeds.


TMConlon wrote:

> I have a 80 GB 7200 RPM drive in my XP machine. I've recently come into
> possesition of an older (3 years) 40 GB 5400 RPM Maxtor drive.
>
> I'm considering putting the 5400 RPM drive in the box as a slave drive.
>
> My "dumb XXX" question is: Can I mix the 2 different drive speeds on the same
> IDE cable?
>
> In the not too distant past, I had tried installing a 7200 RPM drive into an
> older (5+ years) Dell box. At the time the BIOS wouldn't recognize the 7200
> RPM drive and I had to revert to a 5400 RPM drive.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Tom Conlon

Report this post to a moderator