I love this forum, ppl are awesome
I am happy to get a new HD, the Lacie is a cheapo to back-up work stuff and transfer tv/music/photo's. It is the 500GB version of this: http://www.lacie.com/au/products/product.htm?pid=11016
Either options is going to cost me around the same money so I'd rather pick the USB2/Firewire combination that performs best. Like you say it's worth it! Nothing worse than performance issues when you are struggling to record something just right.
I am recording music for my self and a band mate (singer), we have other members set up for bass, keys and drums but trying to write and map out songs first. At some point we'll try and make demo's but write now they are more like sketches. We range from folky / country (in an Australian way) through to fuzzy sort of art/rock - a lot of different stuff! Big fans of everything from Modest Mouse, Pixies, Super Furry Animals, Pavement, Band of Horses, Ryan Adams, Jesus Mary Chain, Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, Built to Spill, Wilco... it goes on and on!!!
If we are going with the Duet & USB2.0 HD over the One & Firewire HD combo I am really worried the external HD will be the bottleneck. I was actually guessing you'd recommend the other way around. My only reasoning is that the Apogee One is built and sold on the premise it is USB2.0 (and works). My gut feel tells me a USB2.0 Hard drive (and the associated RPM) would be slower?
Option 1 - $680USD
Apogee Duet ($500USD) and 1.0TB (1000GB) OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 'Quad Interface' 7200RPM 32MB Cache Solution with eSATA/FW800/FW400/USB2 ($180USD)
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire ... _FW400_USB
Option 2 - $440USD
Apogee One ($260USD) AND 1.0TB (1000GB) OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 'Quad Interface' 7200RPM 32MB Cache Solution with eSATA/FW800/FW400/USB2 ($180USD)
There is also a mini but the limited is 16mb cache as opposed to 32mb cache on Mercury Pro. The SSD options start getting silly pricey expensive and may not be needed!
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire ... _FW400_USB
