What FireWire 800 drive (2.5") to build/buy for MacBook Pro?

Question

Hello community, this topic is to request a little help choosing a FireWire 800 storage solution. About once every two days, I need to run a virtual machine, either Windows XP or Ubuntu. The disk image is currently located on an external USB 2.0 Western Digital hard drive, which is also used for not-speed-sensitive storage. Performance is decent, as long as I quit all possible application before launching (I have 4GB RAM, planning on 8GB upgrade very soon) and don't launch too many apps in the virtual machine, however, I feel performance is lagging since I can see the virtual hard drive indicator turning red most of the time, and the 4 white LEDs on the WD going back and forth (although it doesn't necessarily indicate heavy activity). Especially, restoring to and from saved states routinely takes 45 seconds or more. The external drive is about 90% full most of the time, and may be a contributing factor to the slow feeling. Hence, I thought about putting this FireWire 800 port to good use, and plug a compatible drive in it. I had the following requirements:
3-year warranty an absolute minimum, 5 years
would be ok (my current WD MyPassport has 5). Reason is I consider if manufacturers trust their drive for 5 years, it shouldn't be a source of worry for many years to come. I consider 2-year warranty to be substandard drives.
2.5" form factor. Reason is I rarely happen to have enough room or steady power to lay and plug a full 3.5" drive, unless it uses a battery, which is extremely rare and would add bulk in my bag.
Ability to saturate FW800 port. I think a more performant drive would be a waste of money since they constantly go down in price, and I may be able to get a better deal by the time I switch to Thunderbolt-based MacBook Pro. Admittedly, this is a "soft" requirement, given expected use.
Under $150 (would come to $170 tax,S&H included)
I understand pretty well that the two latter points come in opposition and need a compromise, so I think a large compromise on drive size is to be expected. So far, I thought about these solutions:
Fully manufactured, i.e. Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex + FW800 dongle. Major drawback: dongle is expensive, and appears to use a proprietary connector. If it breaks, impossible to replace it quickly. Alternative: LaCie Rugged (pretty big for a 2.5" drive), G-Tech (usually quite expensive).
Handmade from performance platter drives, i.e. Western Digital Scorpio Black + FW800 enclosure. Major drawback: wouldn't saturate a FW800 port since it comes in SATA300 flavor only, but I get the strong feeling it would perform better than many manufactured drives.
Handmade from SSD, i.e. Corsair + FW800 enclosure. Major drawback: from this page, major compromises would have to be made on capacity. Affordable SSDs seem to be limited to 40 or 60GB, and while I don't put capacity as a priority, I may have to use the high-performance drive for other tasks, such as editing short high-def movies, or add a third virtual machine. Considering the Windows virtual drive needs to be around 15GB, and 25 for Ubuntu, 60GB wouldn't leave enough elbow room.
What solution would be better advisable, and what arguments would you put forth for it?

Answer 1

Reply on a dead topic:
After a word, Macally used the Oxford chipset. So Macally I went, and put a Scorpio Black 500GB inside. Ran fine, but I got it stolen in a coffee shop a few days after I started to use it. Had no time yet to do a backup, so data was lost. Surveillance cams weren't working at the time of the theft, nobody has seen anything, and, as usual, police won't do anything about it.
Second drive I got was also a Scorpio Black I put inside the Mercury Mini enlosure from OWC. Marginal difference experienced from the Macally, but most recent Oxford chipset would ensure fewer head parkings, that are very noisy and unsettling, so much I thought there was something wrong with the drive, and still think there is, despite reassurance from Western Digital.
The mobile drive I happen to use is the lesser-performance G-Drive from Hitachi, a 750GB version.