Thanks for the reply EV_Simon :-)
So, if I understand correctly, your laptop has 3 bays? (ie. 2 SSDs and one for your SATA spindle)?
Also, just for clarity, when you say "pagefile" you mean the Windows pagefile. Correct?
I know that people sometimes relocate the Windows pagefile off the OS spindle, to improve performance (or save disk space on the OS spindle). Was that your reason? Or did you want to reduce writes to the SSD? Keep in mind here that my new machine will have 32GB of DDR3, so I could probably run without a pagefile if I wanted to (but prefer not to do that). Oh, I see something: Would Win8 try to create a 64GB+ pagefile on my SSD? (that would be an expensive pagefile).
I appreciate your experience in this area. I'm monitoring the post for updates as I am doing this work today. Right now I'm working on a copy of the old Win7 C: spindle, removing VMware software and primary hardware specific drivers (that shouldn't be in the VM).
Btw, I have 3 new SATA III spindles to plug in. This is my 1st experience with SATA III, so I don't have a good feel for performance yet (I do have undesired experience with VM disk latency in my old SATA II drives).
Look forward to your reply. . . .