Hey Guys,

So I am new to recording and have a few questions. I recently purchased a Saffire Pro 40 Firewire interface.

My friend is lending me his computer to record, but it needs an internal hard drive and PCI firewire card. I also need an external hard drive for storage.

So lay it on me: what is important in selecting each of these?

For internal hard drive, obviously size and I am getting a SATA but is the cache or latency incredibly important? What is the minimum and optimum I'll need for each stat? I was looking at a 500 GB 6.0 Gb/s 32MB cache with 4 ms latency from Western Digital.

As far as firewire cards, I am getting IEEE1394A and I know what chipset I likely want (one recommended for my interface), but what else is important?
Also, I noticed the number of pins on each of these cards varies. Are they all compatible with PCI and is PCIe compatible with PCI?

As far as external hard drives, I was thinking just USB 2.0, as I do not want the interface and hard drive sharing the same bus.

When it comes to drives in general, should I go 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM? 7200 can write faster but its more prone to crashing. If 5400 makes the cut for recording, I am thinking about doing that.

If someone could give me some input on my babblings, that would be great.

Thanks.

Chris