i will be buying an ssd soon giving me an ssd (sata 3 hopefully) and a 7200rpm hdd to work with.
what would be the best way to organize files for ppro performance?
right now im thinkng doing it this way:

ssd-
os/programs
scratch disk/disk cache

hdd-
raw files/project files
output disk

is that an optimum two disk setup? as i am using a laptop. the max i could get are only 2 disks and i cant use raid since i only swapped my dvd out for an hdd caddy. i could also optionally connect my usb3 external 5400rpm hdd during final render (output files) if this will speed things up.

That's how I would do it. It would be good to have a third disk though. Having a third disk for rendering is very helpful. That way the renderer can read from one disk and write to the other. Keeps you from being disk limited.

so it would be best to use my external 5400 hdd for rendering output even if its a much slower drive?

Check this guide from the Adobe forums
http://forums.adobe.com/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/2-2906955-31395/Guideline+Disks.jpg

thanks, thats good info. however my 3rd disk is an external 5400rpm hdd, so i still have to ask, is it better to have the output/export on the external or keep in the 7200 data disk?

It is always nice to have a backup and there is no need to have a fast drive for exports...

so it would be best to use my external 5400 hdd for rendering output even if its a much slower drive?

I did a six hour render yesterday, and ran win7's performance monitor for a while watching it work. The computer was rendering at a rate of about 5 frames/second. The rendering disk was seeing a maximum queue size of 0.05 (extremely low). IOW, it was being hit maybe once every couple of seconds.

Speed of the rendering drive isn't often (if ever) going to be the bottleneck.