I'm gonna' guess that Firewire is gonna' be the better way to go versus USB 2.0, despite USB being faster-- at least on paper.

I don't have a ton of money to throw around at all anymore... various things have led to me being rather broke, and I could continue to be broke for some time.
It's not unemployment, mind you lol... just crap going down.
One time I was looking at an external HDD casing, then just switching the drive inside of it as needed.
That's no longer a feasable solution, so... what HDD should I get?

I also don't need anything gigantic. 250GB's or less would be fine indeed.

Firewire vs. USB 2.0 is really simple. If your on a PC, USB is better. If your on a mac, firewire is better. Okay, that's over simplified. Both should be able to sustain 4 MB/s, but firewire (400 mbs) actually can sustain faster write speeds than USB 2.0 (which is rated at 480 mb/s). Yeah, it's weird. And for these things, the bottleneck isn't the firewire/usb system, but the lousy way they translate information to and from the ATA drives (like oxford 911 chips).

If you have the hard drive already, a firewire enclosure costs 30 or so bucks (everything but the drive). Otherwise, just go to pricewatch.com and get one with a brand harddrive inside. 250 GB all inclusive should cost less than $150.

Fantom has a 250GB FW drive for $89. Their quality is pretty shoddy, though (at least the casing and power supply - my brother tried one and the AC adapter - which is a near copy of the LaCie - was DOA).

I recommend FireWire for anything. I'm sure it enjoys similar speed and throughput advantages on PC as on Mac. USB2.0's stated bandwidth is a bunch of marketing BS, whereas even FW400 is quite fast in real life. USB2.0 should be relegated to mice and consumer inkjets, not storage.

I'd be perfectly comfortable capturing to USB 2.0 on a PC. Here's an article illustrating what I mean:
http://www.barefeats.com/usb2.html

I'm perfectly comfortable capturing USB2 or Firewire on either platform. I've never had dropped frames with either.

IS A TWO MB BUFFER OKAY ON AN EXTERNAL?
WHAT'S THE... I DON'T KNOW!
Uh, sorry about my excitemnt... I just left this to the very last moment. The day I'm forced to go in and purchase it...

It would of course be the drive I keep all my capture scratch on, eh; while Final Cut runs off the main drive.

It depends on the size. Probably not, though. 2MB is indicative of a fairly cheap/low-end drive. You should really try to get a drive with an 8MB buffer.

I went to Compusmart and ended up cheaping out and getting an 80GB Iomega USB 2.0 drive. Uh... I'm right now in the process of getting the beast ready. Apparently they have a 30 day return policy, so I'll test it out first and see if it's cool.

I don't want anything giantic as far as size goes. I just cannot afford it. From what I've seen a read, too... it seems only bigger truly more expensive drives have the 8Mb cache.

I remember back in the day that 8Mb cache was a nessesicty for uploading to, but once that DV was loaded to the drive, it had not problems with it. I'm hoping that's what occurs here tonight and tomorrow.