When two IDE devices are connected to the same cable, both devices will transfer data only as fast as the slowest device on the cable. It's a limitation of the IDE specification. So if you put a fast device and a slow device on the same cable, they will both be slow.

I'm guessing that the change in configuration moved your ripper drive onto the same IDE cable as a faster device. Does that sound like what happened?

Now, whatever is now sharing the cable with the slower device (didn't look closely at your description, was it an optical drive?) will be slowed down to that speed. Just keep an eye out for it.