I'm gonna buy an EHD, I'm wondering what kind of specifications it needs to have. (Tb? Rpm? FireWire or USB?) I'm thinking about 2 or 3 tb a G-drive maybe
USB 2.0 or 3.0. Whatever your USB ports are. I have one of each and really see no difference in performance.
7200 RPM or greater. Mine are 7200 RPM 1TB Seagate Barracudas placed in USB external drive cases.
Cases are around $20-$30. Drives around $70. Here is the drive I use for all four of mine. Two internal, two external.
If purchasing an external drive that comes in a case, make damn sure the specs read 7200 RPM. Many of them are made for backing up data and only have 5400 RPM drive.
Firewire devices daisy-chain (up to 63 devices on the chain). It was BUILT to do this.
Firewire800 can handle hundreds and hundreds of simultaneous channels at one time.
Never a problem. (btw this is the same setup I used on my XP laptop with firewire and never had a problem there, either)
Note that you put the Firewire400 device LAST on the chain.
Firewire is smart and the 800 devices will continue to work at 800 speeds until they hit the 400 device... so you put the fw400 interface LAST.