R.I.P. Raptor, you have served me well.

**Matridom** · March 16th, 2010, 09:40 AM

Well, it's been a good run, but one of my 75 gig Raptors went the way of it's namesake and decided to die on me yesterday. I guess i ignored the SMART errors one too many times. My desktop would not show me it's lovely wallpaper anymore.

I was then at a cross road; Do i replace the drive via RMA, or replace it with a new drive?

RMA - 1 to 2 weeks
New drive - 5 minute drive to the store.

The debate raged on...

I looked at comprative performance. Most mainstream hard drives where close to the performance of the venerable speedy titan, mainly due to technology advances. So my raptors where more like small heaters, as all the reasons i got them in the first place are no longer valid.

I went looking online to see what i could replace them with, and like a sign from God, the front page of a local store hit me square in the face:

25% off on OCZ Vertex 60 Gig SSD's!!

How could i ignore a sign from divinity as this?

The look on the sales guy's face was priceless when i asked for 2 of them, mainly cause i told him "One is not fast enough, i need two for a stripe array"

I set them up in raid 0, installed windows and man, was it fast, less then 7 minutes to install. I now need to get some firmware updates taken care of, and possibly re-install windows again, but it's looking real good right now.