Files corrupted when written to external Firewire drive

I recently discovered that files transferred from my internal ATA drives to my external Firewire drives have been getting corrupted.
The corruption is most noticable in Quicktime movies where I can see individual video frames with pixelated blocks of color and short noise bursts in the audio. My concern, however, is that it is happening to any file type and the corruption may not be noticed until it is too late.
I read a few posts from the end of last year that stated the Firewire ports of the B & W G3s have problems. The general solution appeared to be the use a dedicated PCI card.
Here are my questions:
(1) Is there a formal aritcle discussing this problem? (I didn't find one)
(2) Copying files is a VERY basic function of an operating system. Shouldn't there be some kind of error generated if a copied file doesn't match the source? (like a checksum error).
(3) If a PCI Firewire card is the answer, is there anything to watch out for when selecting one?
(4) I'd like a better way to compare souce and destination files after a copy. What application can I use to do a low-level comparison of two files?
Thanks,
John

John,
My reference to RAM was by way of example. Another example of error opportunities is in rebuilding the desktop. I have had files lost because of the desktop changing when the removable media or external hard drive is changed to a computer with a different OS. Rebuilding the desktop restored the files.
The guys that wrote Disk Warrior could give the brutal full on why files appear, disappear and get corrupted. I choose to not trust any one medium so I backup my backups. Sometimes a reliable routine is better than an explaination.
No one has responded to my inquiry about why jpeg files are corrupted when copied from the B&W to a PC zip disk but not to an external HDD. I should try that with a PC formatted HDD. The odd thing is that quicktime will read the corrupted file but jpegview will not. Or the otherway around. I have forgotten the details because I gave up on trying to get an answer.
I would be interested in reading more about file transfers during the process of burning a CD and how buffer underun technology works. As you said, the answer may be so detailed that the explanation wouldnot be understandable without becoming a text book!
Jim

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