laptop, HD100, and Ext. HDD
 

I have an HD100, a dell laptop, and a firewire external hard drive.

I'd like to use the laptop as a field monitor and record from the camera to the ext hdd via the laptop.

The laptop has only a single four pin firewire port. What's would be the best way to do what I want to do?

Purchase a PCMCIA firewire card and connect your external HDD to it. Should work fine.

Thanks for the reply, but it doesn't have pcmcia slot. It's a new dell and they don't put them on any more. I think the standard is pci express or something like that.

I believe that there are hard disks with multiple firewireconnections out there, but switching to a USB hard disk would be cheaper.

Buy SATA Hardisk, put it in the casing, then attach it to the laptop thru USB 2.0 connection. So, your firewire can be dedicated to the camera.

Is this a better solution that a firewire port connected to an express slot?

I think the throughput in USB is well-assured. Considering the internal SATA with its read/write capability, I believe is a must when ingested with a lot of informations from the camera.
Reason to go with this, since you don't have the PCMCIA or ExpressCard slot in your laptop.

no it DOES have express card slot.

Great, then you can buy expressCard firewire card.