NP9150 - Deciding between HDD/SSD configurations

I know a lot of people are asking about this, and I apologize if these questions have been asked elsewhere, but I just want to clarify some things. To my understanding, there are a number of possible combinations of HDD+SSD that you can go with with the NP9150. These are the ones I'm considering:

1. SSD as primary hard drive and HDD in optical bay
2. HDD as primary hard drive and SSD in optical bay
3. HDD as primary hard drive, an mSATA SSD, and optical bay remains a DVD drive

Which of these would make for the fastest and cheapest option? I'm leaning toward that last option now because I think I might want the DVD drive. From what I've read, I think the mSATA would be slower than a regular SSD (especially one in the primary hard drive slot rather than in the optical bay), but how much slower? Would the mSATA still be worth it?

Also, I've never used an SSD before, so I was wondering how difficult it would be to set this up properly to take full advantage of it? Ideally, I'd like to just install my OS and some programs on it. Would I have to do anything more than that?

I'm also thinking of purchasing the mSATA SSD separately to get one that's large enough and less expensive. Specifically, I'm thinking of getting this one: Newegg.com - Kingston SSDNow mS100 SMS100S2/64G mSATA 64GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD). Can I be sure this will be compatible? How easy is it to install on my own and set it up to run the OS?

Thanks!

 

Option 1 will give you the best performance and the best price out of all of those configurations. The SSD needs to be in the primary drive bay to take advantage of the bandwidth SATA III offers, and SSDs are much cheaper per GB compared to mSATA, and much faster because SSDs have more NAND chips and use the SATA III interface while mSATA drives use SATA II.

As far as wanting your DVD drive, slim external DVD drives that will fit in about any laptop bag are cheap now, and getting cheaper all the time.

Edit: Forgot to address a couple questions you had. It is quite simple to configure it. You just install your OS and programs like you would on a HDD. Windows 7 takes care of pretty much everything else for you. Note that you should never defrag a SSD like you would a HDD. Defragging a SSD only reduces it's lifetime and doesn't give any performance boost(even loses performance in some cases).

 

If you don't want the inconvenience of an external disk drive, the mSATA + HDD is probably the best compromise. mSATA drives are slower, but you probably won't notice it too much in normal everyday work. I've had an 80GB mSATA in a laptop for a while with a 500GB storage drive, and it does pretty well. It feels just as responsive as the bigger 2.5" drives I've used as well. In benchmarks it wouldn't do as well, but does that matter to you?

The SSD in primary bay + HDD in optical + external optical drive is the best performer, but then you have to carry an external disk drive.

For a speed comparison:

mSATA you selected: 255Mbps Read/ 170Mbps Write
Typical SATA III drive: 500Mbps+ Read / 500Mbps+ Write

Cryophilous covered the basics on install and maintenance pretty well.