External HD for Final Cut

Will rendering/saving/etc be slower if I am using an external HD or is it mostly based off processor speed/graphics card? What exactly is the workflow for using an external HD for final cut?
I'm in the market for a new External so I can use it for scratch disks and saving directly onto it so I don't clutter my mac's HD.
Right now I'm looking at OWC raid HD.. it's 7200 RPM 300 mb/s, what aspect of video editing would that effect? There's also the option to get an external raid SSD, which I thought was for faster booting of applications/OS so I don't know why it would be useful as an external or if it would be useful beneficial for Final Cut.
I am basically looking for the cheapest 1TB drive that is reliable (won't die on me in a year) and won't hinder my Final Cut speeds if I'm working directly off of it.
Any insight would be great.
Message was edited by: Pngwyn
Message was edited by: Pngwyn

I assume you are talking about your 17" MacBook Pro. You should never store video for editing on the internal hard drive of your laptop. You should ALWAYS use an external drive. That being said I use a Sonnet Tempo SATA Express34 card adapter in the Express34 slot to a Thermaltake Blackx Duet hard drive docking system. I put two Hitachi (or any brand) 1TB internal drives in the dock. You can get these now for less than $60.00 from B&H. These are great because they are semi-hot swappable which means you can use separate drives for separate projects.
Of course a RAID would work also. I would still consider a eSATA RASID device and use the Express 34 slot. Maybe someone has a recommendation on a specific brand.

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