OK have a fairly grunty PC with 3 1TB HDD's, but with Vista  Ultimate installed.  It's slowly becoming a dog I think due in part to all the program installs etc. 

I had originally set it up as much as possible to have Windows & programs on drive C & most data on 2nd drive & video files on 3rd drive.  Did this for backup and performance reasons.  I actually have 1st & 2nd drive partitioned so that I could run a MS data backup daily to the 2nd partition on drive C and a more program/system backup from C drive to the 2nd partition of the 2nd drive.  Actually, don't think that worked that well with one? of the backups as MS backup insists on including drive C with the backup anyway?.  Need a NAS I know , but can't really afford that quite yet.



It seems that when I did this Windows etc didn't really like doing this purely.  eg  Still had problems with other software looking for Pictures in drive C.  Ended up trying some program from somewhere that set all the registry changes etc but a bit ugly, security seemed a bit weird etc.  This could be my main problem, don't know.

Windows is reporting it isn't able to run updates for a few months...so I really should rebuild it, but it's just that it will take about 3 days work to install & configure everything how I like it etc, I am a software developer (database type stuff), but bit of a noob when it comes to low level things, networking etc.

Should I just stay with Vista or go for Windows 7 or 8?  (I'm thinking 7 for now if I change particularly as I am a heavily use Office 2003 which it isn't compatible with).

Any tips, help on best way to set up my drives with a clean install much appreciated.