TR, I wouldn't be too hard on yourself...
First off, these puppies run $329 each or about $1.10/GB, and your 1TB Seagates ran probably closer to $0.23/GB, or about 1/5th the cost per Gig. Second, these are 2.5 inch drives in a 3.5 inch case, and the outer rim speed of a 2.5 inch drive spinning at 10K RPM is about the same as a 3.5 inch drive spinning at 7K. The seek times on the smaller drive are better due to lighter arms and shorter travel distances, and I suspect this is where this drive gets its biggest boost over the latest technology 3.5 drives.
Bottom line is if you run a lot of intensive I/O operations, the cumulative advantage of the Velocirator will probably show up, but for most basic "launch and run" applications I doubt the difference will be earth-shattering.
I think this drive is maybe an ideal single drive solution for paging or CS scratch where somebody wants a quick and easy performance boost, but any current 2-drive stripe would likely outperform it. Of course if one were to stripe a pair of these little drives for scratch, that would probably be a screamer for large file processing in Photoshop. The issue then becomes the old cost/performance tradeoff, and I doubt the extra speed you might see on some really large file manipulations would be worth the cost... Basically, I'm saying I think you chose well :thumbs:
Cheers,