Has anyone used one of these?
 

I'd like to start transforming my laptop into a more robust video editor. The one big obstacle in my way is storage- since I only have a 100GB drive for my OS, apps, and storage. I figured the best solution would be to get one of those spiffy external firewire hard drives. Unfortunately, my laptop doesn't have firewire 800 support, so I found one of these ExpressCard accessories out there by Belkin. It looks like it would do exactly what I need it to do- and then some...

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...Expansion.html

Has anyone ever used one of these before? It's relatively inexpensive, but if its something to avoid, I'd rather not tie up my money with it

IMO you don't need FireWire 800 for your hard drive. I am capturing to a LaCie drive with FireWire 400 and I haven't had any problems. It has been said however, that putting the camera and hard drive on different buses is better. That card would effectively create two FireWire busses. If you want a less expensive solution, and your computer already had FireWire 400, get a FireWire hub. I haven't had any problems with my FireWire 400 hub setup.

If you are going to buy an Express Card, I recommend the eSATA solution over either USB or Firewire. That way you are communicating with the drive in its native speed, 3000 megabits instead of 480-800. eSATA is a shielded variant on the small, flat SATA cable on new drives and is as fast or faster than any SCSI or FiberChannel interface.

ExpressCard-34mm:
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/def...px?EDC=1155802
Enclosure:
http://www.cwol.com/serial-ata/esata...-enclosure.htm

Wow! I haven't seen an eSATA Express Card before! This looks like it should provide much better performance than firewire- and I can build my own enclosures...

Although, wouldn't I still need some kind of RAID 0 configuration to be able to ingest/edit/playback HDV video?

That's still a really cool interface- I'll have to do more research! Thanks!

I'm not sure you need to RAID if you are seeking to do just 2 or 3 streams of HDV. There are other card variants however.