[MacDV] External hard drive for video work

[Brett Conlon]

Hi all,

I'm looking into purchasing a 400-500GB external drive for assisting me in 
doing my home (and maybe in the near future freelance) video work.

I've been looking primarily at FW800 drives but these all come at a 
premium price. It'll be my Christmas present and funds are quite tight so 
I'm not able to openly "throw" cash at a solution. I'd like to go 500GB 
but think 400GB is going to be the more likely outcome cost-wise.

In your experience is FW800 that much faster than FW400? Is anyone quite 
happily using USB2 drives for their video work, seeing that USB2 drives 
are more common and cheaper?

I believe that you can't boot a G4/G5 off a USB2 drive (you can with Intel 
Macs) but that may not be such a big issue for me as I currently have a 
120GB ext FW400 drive which I would use for those sorts of tasks.

I've been told to avoid the LaCie drives as their failure rate is quite 
high. Any other drive recommendations, including raw drives if I end up 
purchasing drive & case separately?

Your suggestions are most welcome!

Cheers,

Cojcolds