Firewire drive (for Photoshop scratch disk)

[zephyr]

I'm looking to use an external drive as a scratch disk in Photoshop (as well as for extra storage space). I'm thinking that a Firewire 800 drive will be much more effective than a USB 2.0 drive for this purpose.

Can someone recommend some good Firewire 800 products? I have already read the comments in this thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... t=firewire


So now,

1. I need a Firewire 800 port. The Lacie Firewire PCMCIA (cardbus) card is recommended by forum member RonS, who says he can reach 64MBytes/sec with it. Alternatives would be an expressCard card. (Or maybe dropping Firewire 800 altogether and going with eSATA.)

2. I need a Firewire 800 drive. Should I get a retail package or drive+enclosure? In terms of a retail package, I found a well-reviewed unit in the Western Digital My Book Pro (
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136047)


Any opinions?

[own6volvos]

Go eSata all the way. Much higher bandwidths, even on the lowend 1.5gbps cards, and you can end up running drives natively, without any conversion taking place. So instead of IDE>USB>bla you are going SATA>SATA. This also helps reduce cpu load, and will probably make you happier overall.