my mobo is about the same age...or a year older...

upgraded power supply, cpu, ram, installed an internal esata and bought a decent "pci card ...for firewire 800 )...and put that in...and now I use a Graid 1 T external with the fw800 and it works great...

easy to unplug, take out to locations, share with others etc... or else just use it when you want....

I dont always turn on the graid when I boot computer. no problem , no mssg, no heartache...using xp ...

When I do turn it on before boot, xp sees it assigns drive letter ( in my case J ) and its a happy clam....

I also got macdrive in the event I want to format it for mac to share with location camera guys shooting with alexa log c pro res type stuff and are using macs for their transfers ...just give them my graid, plug in, take files...

easy..

fun !

ps... the graid also has esata and usb connections as well as fw800 ...so if you upgrade later you can use it with esata etc...whatever...

edit....the pci card with fw 800 ( as per B Hunt's suggestion ) has its own chip and I have 2 ports, and Im not sure cause I never used both at one time, but I think the card has a chip for each port...so it doesnt get messed up with conflict using multiple stuff on 1 fw chip...

I use eSATA drives. LOTS of them. Works just as a regular SATA internal would work except of course it is outside the case and has its own indepenent power supply for each drive.

I use eSATA for the system drive in fact...allows me to keep a "clean" install of my OS and programs on a backup drive in case something terrible happens or I just want a clean sweep. In that instance, I just disconnect the OS drive and plug up the new one.

I use eSATA for all of my media storage. I fill up a drive, then plug up a new one. I can always access old projects easily by just reconnecting the old drive via eSATA again.

eSATA is as fast as your hard drive, so anything like USB3 isn't really going to be faster. My eSATA enclosures also have USB 2.0 connections on them in case I need to grab one and plug it up to a laptop or other computer for another editor that doesn't have eSATA. I wouldn't want to edit off a USB2 connection, but considering that I only work with AVCHD right now, it's got plenty of overhead for the roughly 25 megabits that AVCHD runs at.

So yeah...go buy your own drives (WD Caviar Black is my preference) and then grab an eSATA external enclosure (I get Vantec ones for about $30/each) and you're set. The Vantec enclosures include an eSATA bracket that you can use to convert any SATA internal port to an eSATA port on the back of your case.