IMac drive failure? Consider running off a Firewire 800 external

This is an informational post, but worth sharing I believe.
My 2009 iMac 1TB Seagate (ST31000528ASQ) has failed.
For the SECOND time. When the first one failed at 1.5 y Apple charged me $200+ ($40 service, which is a bargain, and $160+ for the drive which was excessive) to put this one in. I was later reimbursed when Apple extended its recall range.
Now, at age 1.5 y, the second one of this wretched line has failed. I could pay another $200+ to Apple, assuming they'd still service my 4 yo iMac. Or I could bit the bullet, pay $650 for an SSD, and then pay $240 for an independent to work on the disgustingly unserviceable iMac. With the SSD I'd probably extend the machines useable lifespan another 2 years, and I'd get far higher reliability. The latter is very important to me.
Except, there's another option. One that is much cheaper.
My drive wasn't quite dead, so I was able to use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable external drive. It sits in a Firewire 800 cradle, I used a 7200 rpm 1TB Samsung - one of my offsite backup rotation drives. I booted off this drive and use Disk Utility to unmount my internal. I figured I'd do this while I decided which option to pursue.
Weird thing is, the iMac 2009 works rather well this way. If anything, it's FASTER than it was running off the internal drive. Aperture is MUCH smoother.
If your internal drive fails in this old machine, I think switching to a fast, big external drive is a good option to consider.

Since the Mac is set to boot off the external, i was suprised a complete failure of the internal would make a difference. How does that happen? (I unmount using Disk Utility, it presumably remounts when I restart. But I supposed if it died it couldn't remount :-).

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