Performance hit query

[obeone@gmail.com]

Although I now use an internal SSD on my mid-2011 iMac (self install) I still have the original HHD in situ. I use the HDD mainly for storage of large files, e.g. pictures, videos etc. which I access through symlinks. I also have on that drive an old Vbox Windows 7 VM which I decided to update and run on that drive.

My question is this - apart from the obvious performance hit of using a 7200 HDD instead of the boot SSD drive, should there be any other performance hit? I have noticed that the W7 install seems sluggish and black screens for a short time when starting up and even after that isn't particularly snappy. I run an almost identical W7 on the SSD drive with Parallels and that VM absolutely flies. I have given the Vbox VM 5 gigs of RAM two CPUs and 128mb of video memory, additions and extensions are installed.

It may be may that I have forgotten how slow a 7200 drive can be or is it because I'm not using the boot drive?