Capturing dv onto external usb 2.0 drive?

[el bob]

I'm guessing that it can be done, but I'm wondering if there would be a great loss in performance over adding in an extra IDE PCI card.

I have the 80GB drive I mentioned getting before and I'm not positive about how I want to hook it up to my computer.

Sorry for postings specs again, but it may help those who reply. (lol and my computer certainly isn't something to brag about)

Athlon XP 1600+
Thermalright SK-7 w/ Panaflo 80mm L1A
Abit NF7-S v1.0
2x 256MB DDR Crucial
Apollo Gf2 GTS 64MB DDR
400W Antec PP-403X PSU
30GB ATA/66 7200RPM WD HDD Caviar WD300
2x 120GB ATA/100 7200RPM WD HDD WD1200BB in RAID 1
6x Toshiba DVD-ROM
32x LiteOn CD-RW LTR-3212
1.44MB 3.5" FDD
Onboard nForce Ethernet Controller
Onboard nForce Audio
Chieftec Scorpio TX-10WD

Here's ASCII art for how I'm currently using my available bays. (note: case is just like any ANTEC/Chieftec/Chenming/etc. mid-tower dragon/sohoFileSever/etc)

5.25" Bay --- *Empty*
5.25" Bay --- *Empty*
5.25" Bay --- CD-RW
5.25" Bay --- DVD-ROM
-space-
3.5" Bay --- Floppy
3.5" Bay --- *Empty*
3.5" Slot --- 30GB operating system HDD
-space-
3.5" Slot --- 120GB in RAID 1
3.5" Slot --- *Empty*
3.5" Slot --- 120GB in RAID 1

...where a Bay is just a Slot that has an available opening on the front of the case. (I think that's the right definition of the terms. Please correct me if it isn't.)

I don't have case fans and I'd rather not make my computer louder if it was at all possible, so I'd like to keep the slot between the 120s empty for heatign reasons.

For the same reasons, I'd also like to keep the slot above the 30GB empty.

So, the options that I get from that are to...

A Put the 80 in the top 5.25" bay with some adapter hardware and attach the device as Primary Slave drive (would be slave to the operating system 30gb drive)
Pros: No extra needed hardware
Cons:
-Would require moving the 30GB drive to the second from the top bay so I could get them both on one IDE cable.
-2 drives sharing one channel (Is this really a problem? I've always thought yes, but maybe I'm wrong)

or

B Do the same as above but put the drive on its own IDE channel by adding in an IDE PCI adapter.
Pros: full bandwidth to the drive
Cons: -cable management would be a pain
-would have to buy ata/100 ide pci adapter because I only have spare ata/66 adapters (there is a slight difference is real speed right? - marketing aside)

or

C Attach the 80 externally with USB 2.0
Pros: portable
Cons: possible speed problems (woudl there be?)

What do you guys think?

-el bob

[Jeremy]

i do a firewire setup on my laptop that works fine. camcorder hooked up to firewire hdd which is hooked up to single port on laptop...no frame drops, so you should be ok; USB 2.0 has more protocol and CPU overhead but you will have a dedicated port and your CPU is plenty fast. go for it.

[el bob]

I've been doing some Google'ing and this is one of the more insightful articles I've found:

http://www.macopinion.com/columns/macskeptic/02/02/08/

After reading that, a couple of other articles, and Jeremey's advice (thanks ), I think I'm going to go with FireWire.