Just because the drive has better statistics does not mean it is faster. There are many things to consider. The biggest issue I see is that they are both hooked up to USB 2.0, thus making a lot of the speed advantages of the 7200rpm drive irrelevant. If the drive was hooked up internally to a SATA III bus then you would see a difference.
Per wikipedia:
USB 2.0 was released in April 2000 (now called "Hi-Speed"), adding
higher maximum signaling rate of 480 Mbit/s (due to bus access
constraints the effective throughput is limited to 35 MB/s or 280
Mbit/s), in addition to the "USB 1.x Full Speed" signaling rate of 12
Mbit/s.
Per Sandisk:
Difference between SATA I, SATA II and SATA III What is the difference
between SATA I, SATA II and SATA III? SATA I (revision 1.x) interface,
formally known as SATA 1.5Gb/s, is the first generation SATA interface
running at 1.5 Gb/s. The bandwidth throughput, which is supported by
the interface, is up to 150MB/s.
SATA II (revision 2.x) interface, formally known as SATA 3Gb/s, is a
second generation SATA interface running at 3.0 Gb/s. The bandwidth
throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 300MB/s.
SATA III (revision 3.x) interface, formally known as SATA 6Gb/s, is a
third generation SATA interface running at 6.0Gb/s. The bandwidth
throughput, which is supported by the interface, is up to 600MB/s.
This interface is backwards compatible with SATA 3 Gb/s interface.
SATA II specifications provide backward compatibility to function on
SATA I ports. SATA III specifications provide backward compatibility
to function on SATA I and SATA II ports. However, the maximum speed of
the drive will be slower due to the lower speed limitations of the
port.
Based upon those stats the fastest the 7200rpm drive can transfer data is somewhere near SATA II speeds.
Regardless the maximum speed they can both transfer is 480mbps because of the USB 2.0 limitation. Then when you consider the drive is 4x bigger than the 5400 the seek time will be slightly longer, add fragmentation, cluster size, disk format, etc and you will locate the source of the slower speeds.
It is like buying a Ferrari and putting a VW Bug engine in it. In order to get maximum speeds all parts must be matched and the hardware needs similar specs.
Are you expecting one drive to be faster than another just because it spins faster? – David Schwartz – 2014-11-02T08:24:55.503
A lot of people on the 7200-RPM drive's Amazon reviews commented on how fast it is, but I have found it to be slower than my other drives, so I'm wondering if the drive I got has a defect.
– randwa1k – 2014-11-02T20:23:14.647Why not do a fair comparison and reformat your new drive as "Mac OS Extended"? – Jason – 2014-11-21T00:00:54.313
A higher spindle speed (RPM) does not always equate to a faster data transfer speed. A faster spindle speed means that the access times are usually lower than a similar model with a slower spindle speed. – вʀaᴎᴅᴏƞ вєнᴎєƞ – 2014-11-21T01:34:47.380
@randwa1k: See this question on Ask Different: http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/56872/why-is-exfat-so-slow-on-mac. ExFAT is specifically designed for flash memory not mechanical hard drives so you should try using another file system like HFS+ (or FAT32 if cross platform compatibility is needed) to see if you get better results.
– James P – 2014-11-21T11:44:42.003