5400 rpm vs 7200 rpm external hard drive

[chasso]

I'm shopping for an external hard drive with a USB 3.0 connection. Will a 7200 rpm drive perform better than a 5400 rpm drive or is the USB 3.0 connection the limiting factor for throughput?

 

[Pyree]

The mechanical HDD is the bottleneck, not USB 3.0.

7200rpm will be faster than 5400rpm but nothing too major for external storage.

It matters more if you use it as internal drive and boot and run program from it.