Back in July 2011 one of the stock Western Digital HD’s in my 2009 Mac Mini Server went out, so I bit the bullet and purchased two new Western Digital Scopio Blacks (both 500GB), and RAID1’d them together. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, and my RAID goes offline. I run several days of block checking, and find that the upper drive has gone out (which, I’ll get replaced by WD, but at this point, I’m looking to replace both drives… and I generally don’t trust refurbished drives). Anyway, figuring two new 500GB drives would cost about $100, I started looking at alternatives, and quickly found the Crucial M500 240GB SSD for $140 through Amazon. I then wouldn’t RAID drives together, I would just put OS/Services on the SSD, then use the still functional 500GB Western Digital drive as storage for larger files (downloads, backups, etc).