Quoting Didier Kryn (kryn@???):

> It seems to me you're fighting to get the last bit of performance out
> of mechanical hard drives, including by using different filesystems
> for different partitions, which makes a lot of sense for servers.

No, not any more. Those configuration details come from HD-based server
systems I constructed many years ago. My new prototype to which I'm
migrating my main linuxmafia.com AKA unixmercenary.net system dispenses
with spinning rust entirely, in favour of a RAID1 pair of SSDs. Good
riddance to spinning rust (except for high capacity and ancillary
storage, of course).

It's not just _performance_, though, but also longevity. The hard
drives in system I construct in the manner described tend to last quite
a lot longer.

> I agree that filesystem play a major role in performance and safety.
> For the performance of the disks, and considering you speak of
> servers, you ommit to speak of the RAID configuration, which seems to
> me more important than the location of the partitions.

It is indeed important. I didn't mention that because it had no
application to the discussion we were having at that moment. (I'm a
huge fan of md-driver RAID1.)

> For what concerns, laptops, I think we are in the era of ssd
> and, unfortunately, there is usually only one disk drive per laptop,
> except of older ones where the cdrom drive can be replaced by a
> disk.

Yes, and this is in my opinion a very regrettable omission from the market.
Many laptop enclosures have adequate physical space for a pair of
equal-sized SSDs. If they would only please leave an empty bay for a
second device and unused power and data connectors, I would be happy
with the option of RAID1-mirroring the entire system.

Worse, some lovely small systems like the Zotac ZBOX C-series, likes
this one as a current example
(https://store.zotac.com/zbox-ci325-nano-with-windows-10-zbox-ci325nano-u-w2b),
would make great little silent home servers, except that they support
only one 63.5 mm (2.5") SSD plus one SSD in the M.2 slot. Grr, so
close, and yet so far.