VelociRaptor, Caviar Black or SSD for Boot Drive

Ok. It's been a while since I posted on these forums. I'm looking at beefing up the boot drive in my system, and possibly a second drive. I currently have four WD 640GB SE16 / Caviar Blue (WD6400AAKS) Hard Drives in my system. The first 2 drives are split into two partitions each. The 3rd and 4th drives have single partitions. I would like to speed up not only boot time but overall performance, especially with the processing and movement of large files on my system which is done often. I need the best bang for the buck. Right now, I average from 50-60MBps and have gotten as high as 80-90Mbps and sometimes 100MBps (this must be a burst rate) when copying files between drives. One thing I try to stay away from is copying files to the same drive the source files are located on. Although that might make sense, it just isn't always an option.

My existing system is as follows:

APC BX1500G Green UPS with AVC
CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply - Retail
GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor Model BX80601920 - Retail
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus Intel Core i5 & Intel Core i7 compatible RR-B10-212P-G1 120mm "heatpipe direct contact" Long life sleeve CPU Cooler - Retail
CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model TR3X6G1600C8 G - Retail
SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD 4870 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive (Quantity = 4 / Internal) w/16MB Cache
Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive (Quantity = 3 / External eSATA) w/32MB Cache
Western Digital Caviar Black WD2001FASS 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive (Quantity = 1 / External eSATA) w/64MB Cache

For the boot drive replacement, I'm considering one of the following:

Western Digital VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX 600GB 10000 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - Bare Drive ($280 from NewEgg) w/32MB Cache

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - Bare Drive ($90 from NewEgg) w/64MB Cache

The mainboard has (6) SATA-3 ports (0-5) and (2) SATA-6 ports (6-7). I'm assuming if I went with a SATA-6 based drive, I could still boot to it, even with it not being on port 0 or 1, simply by changing the boot order in the BIOS. At least in theory, the performance increase should be noticeable, especially when working with large files, though a larger cache in itself also makes a difference, going from 16MB-32MB or 64MB.

My case can hold (4) 3.5" drives internally, which is why I don't have 2 additional drives in the system, which would eliminate splitting up each drive. Regardless of the drive chosen, it would be split into two partitions as the existing drives currently are. I might also replace the second drive which would also be split accordingly, though I don't run programs off of the second drive. I do some heavy file management though, so any drive that has a noticeable performance increase over a Caviar SE16 640GB (WD6400AAKS) drive would be an option. I'm partial to WD, which is why I'm looking at the WD VelociRaptor and Caviar Black models only at this time.

I would consider an SSD for the right capacity (160GB or larger) and price. The only problem with SSD's, is they are cost prohibitive when you get into the capacities over 160GB. Although I've read alot of good info about performance, I've heard that they don't last as long and are not as reliable as standard hard drives. I've also heard that they are limited to how many times you can read/write to them. What is the deal with that?

Please advise. Thanks in advance!

-- MaSoP