HD Tach question

[Twizzle]

I have just installed a bigger 2nd drive in my system. At the moment I have my OS (Win XP) on the smaller quieter Seagate Barracuda 120Gb drive set as a slave (DVD as master as my MB only has one PATA connection).

The 2nd drive is a SATA Seagate Barracuda 400Gb.

If I run HD Tach the graph at the top (sequential read speed) is very similar for both but the bottom graph (burst speed) is 84.7MB/s for the PATA and 231.9MB/s for the larger (and noisier!) SATA.

What does this mean in the real world? Will my system be noticeably faster if I move the OS to the SATA drive or is the burst speed calculation just academic?

Thanks

 

[semi-pro waster]

Burst speed is largely academic as a measure of the drives overall performance, you are better to look at the average speed as that is more reflective of overall performance. That said, the SATA will probably be faster overall because of advances in drive technology rather than the burst speed, in and of itself.