connection interface, glatt?

usb? 1.0, 2.0? Firewire / 1394? eSATA?

That will make a lot of difference, though you can do little about it after the fact (you can't change the interface after the fact). Also, will you be only recording to the drive and playing from a different drive? (unlikely upon reflection.... poor question) For the capturing and editing you *may* find that it's more worthwhile to work (read/write/tempfiles/workfiles) on your system drive, (likely C:) and then only transfer the finished product to an external drive.

Please keep us posted.

It's a usb 2.0 connection.

Haven't figured out how I'm going to do the video stuff. But I imagine it will have some impact on this external drive, since I have to be managing very large files. At a minimum, I'll be cleaning all my jpegs off the C drive and putting that stuff on the external (they're already backed up to DVDs.)

I have an extra 200 gb internal dedicated to storing my por--er--pictures.