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A three drive system - the sweet spot

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Shades:
For 6 months now my main system is set up as a dual-boot Win7 and Server 2012 PC on a i5 with 8GB and a 1TB SATA2 hard disk that is already 3 years old (connected to the 6GB/sec SATA port on my mobo).

Now I must say that the Server 2012 zips along noticeably faster than Windows 7. 80% of the software I use is portable and work as expected on both OS's. I would argue that both systems are the same with one exception, Server2012 runs an Oracle 12 database.

With the above I was expecting similar performance, but Server2012 is really faster, screens open immediately completely populated with varying content full screen. Applying an SSD would improve Windows 7 I have no doubt, but for my intends and purposes I cannot imagine an SSD being faster in Server2012.

Hence I am not planning to upgrade to SSD soon. More RAM and and an extra SATA3 HD would fit me fine and will likely be cheaper than getting an SSD anyway.

Jibz:
I'm looking at this more from a server perspective (since that's where my experience chiefly lies). But there's enough in common between PCs and servers that I think what applies to one pretty much applies to the other as far as hardware goes. Two articles worth looking at are here and here.
-40hz (March 23, 2014, 07:04 AM)
--- End quote ---

Thanks for the links, some good stuff there :Thmbsup:.

I think you're right, the server/enterprise market is a little different. Personally, I've had my SSD for little over two years, and the wear indicator is at 2%. If I can get that with all user and temp folders and the pagefile on the SSD, that's okay for me.

rgdot:
What are drive image backups doing staying on the PC itself?

xtabber:
I used to use multiple drives on my working desktop system, but after moving to smaller form factors in the past five years or so, have used a single 2TB drive with 3 partitions.  C: is under 100GB, and has system, software and critical or frequently used data (work/accounting/correspondence, etc.).   The remainder of the drive is divided roughly equally between two data partitions, with D: used for multimedia, reference materials and VMs, and E: reserved for longer term storage, including software libraries and backup images.

On my working laptop, I have the same sized C: partition, roughly mirroring my desktop C: drive, and a single data partition, where the essential folder trees from the two data partitions on the desktop are mirrored.

Keeping the C: partitions small allows me to image them regularly, while most of what is on the data drives is backed up on external drives.

Earlier this year, I added 120GB SSDs to both desktop and laptop and moved C: to them while keeping the hard drives for the data partitions. This was possible on the laptop because it has an mSata slot, and on the desktop by wedging a 2.5" bracket into space under its single drive cage. 

The difference was more dramatic than I had expected and after a couple of months, I have become a believer in using an SSD for one's system drive.  If you spend a lot of time in front of a computer, it makes day-to-day work much more pleasant:  Programs load almost instantaneously and, perhaps surprisingly, browsing is also faster and smoother, which I attribute to the browser's caching to the SSD.

Shades:
As long as there is a copy from the image not residing on the PC, I don't see the big problem. Actually it would speed up the restoration a whole lot than doing the same job from CD/DVD. Besides it doesn't require supervision either.

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