Streaming MiniDV frames to external hard drive (passing through laptop)?

[nubelube]

SHORT VERSION: My Windows laptop doesn't have enough space for storing video, so I'd like to connect an external hard drive and write the (SD) video to that (while simultaneously streaming the miniDV video in over firewire). Would a USB hard drive work? Would a firewire hard drive work (connected to same firewire card as the camera)?

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LONG-WINDED DETAILS:
My laptop doesn't have a firewire port, so I'll be using a PCMCIA/Cardbus firewire card with two ports. I've looked around:
here and here but there are contradictory statements.

Based on what I've read, this seems to be the technical situation: USB is frowned upon for direct video frame streaming because the camera's USB hardware is simple and it can drop frames if a computer takes too long to process a USB interrupt. Firewire has a controller, that presumably does some form of buffering, so it doesn't have that problem (not sure why they don't just stick a buffer before the USB connection, but...) That's why I'm using Firewire to get the original video (that, and my camera doesn't have a USB connection). But once the frames arrive on my laptop, the USB-interrupt problem just requires a slightly bigger RAM buffer. But that's all theory -- maybe Windows doesn't allocate large enough buffers or some other problem arises. I'd prefer a USB hard drive because they're common and cheap, but I could also get a Firewire hard drive if that works better. In that case, the only additional concern would be sufficient bandwidth (unless Firewire has some sort of peer-transfer protocol). I would be quite surprised if 400Mbps wasn't sufficient to sustain two SD streams (onto laptop and back again), but I've been surprised before. It's also possible that my Firewire card has separate buses for each of the connectors, but I doubt it.

I think either option should work...but I'd like to hear from people who have done it before I drop money on a new hard drive.

BTW, upgrading to a larger laptop hard drive isn't an option; I already have the largest currently available, and it's pretty full with work data that is more important than video fun data.

[v491138]

You are clearly in the right place though my expertise is not video processing. I'm here to learn myself, but I think I can add something in your situation. Firewire should work, but ESATA would be metter. Do you have two firewire on your laptop?
My choice would be to upgrade the laptop's HD as I did here for my Cell.
OK, reread question and my choic is definitely uograde the laptop HD.
How big is that largest avail HD?
Through USB I only get 30MB drive to drive. That is not good enough.
I don't know that Firewire to Rirewire would be enough.
A few DVD's worth of data might make enough room, but you haven't said what CPU you have. All the power you have will make the difference. I'm rambling. For reference my Dell has a 1.6GHz Core Duo.two firewire might make it, but IF you need to go with PCMCIA, why not go with ESATA? That will give you as good as your internal drive can give. That is what I'm looking at for my HP.
Dual ESATA. On that beast,, I'll then have 3 ESATA and 3 USB 2.0. Look to ESATA.
Sorry for being so verbose. Can't remember every thing in real time any more.
Thank you and good luck.

[nubelube]

I decided to look up the bandwidth numbers...according to this it seems that MiniDV does 3.6MB/sec bandwidth (29Mb/sec).

Through USB I only get 30MB drive to drive.