T60: How much does 7200rpm do to my ultrabay second hdd?

[bessel]

To my understanding, the second hdd, although being SATA, is connected to the computer by a SATA-PATA transmitter and eventually by way of PATA. Under linux you will have to mount /dev/hda instead of /dev/sdb or something similar.

I now have a standalone Linux OS on my ultrabay, which hosts a Samsung 5400 drive. It is a bit on the slow side and I was considering a switch to a 7200rpm Hitachi. I would like to know how much boost I can expect from this upgrade, as the SATA-PATA transmitter might be the bottleneck.

For people who use Linux, here are the speed tests on main drive (Lenovo original, HITACHI, sata) and ultrabay drive (Samsung, sata, but ultimately treated as pata). Interestingly they are not much different at all (or to say, sata-pata doesn't matter for 5400rpm).

Main drive: # hdparm -tT /dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 2110 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1055.94 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 96 MB in 3.05 seconds = 31.52 MB/sec

Ultrabay drive: # hdparm -tT /dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 2170 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1085.36 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 96 MB in 3.02 seconds = 31.82 MB/sec