Suggestions for setting up external storage for video editing please?

I am just starting up as a one-man video-editing business, using a 24 inch iMac running Snow Leopard, with Final Cut Studio. I have realised I'll need an external hard drive for HD footage, and I also need to get some back-up solution in place. Looking for speedy i/o, I would like to connect via the ethernet port (if only eSata was included in the iMac, eh!)
I've been planning to get a Drobo, but looking around the forums I see that people say it's too slow for using as a working drive to keep all my source footage, so I've been looking at the G-tech 4 Tb, as it says it is designed for media-content production. Does anyone know if I could use two of the drives for working from and two as back up? Or would it be better to keep back-up entirely seperate, and get a Drobo for that for the G-tech to back up to?
But I am also wondering whether a Mac Mini could be a worthwhile addition to this set up? I find myself sitting around waiting for rendering to complete on clips in my timeline (not to mention exporting to Quicktime conversion!), and I wondered if I put a Mac mini with Xserve installed (Apple store offers this with two 500gb hard drives inside), maybe I could farm the rendering out to the mini while I get on with editing on my iMac? That would require two installations of FCP, which I thought was allowed, but just today in a forum I saw that one would have to be a laptop... anyone have any suggestions for getting rendering done without stopping FCP from doing other things simultaneously?
Also I don't know if that arrangement is even feasible... I see all these things like Xsan and Artbox... as a one workstation editing suite, does FCP handle all the dataflows for external working drive and external back ups okay without having to introduce more controllers?
And can anyone explain to me how I could set up an ethernet connection to an external hard drive, or does that require the extra controllers mentioned above? I've seen it said that you can do it via ethernet, but haven't seen how you can actually go about doing it.
Thanks for overlooking my newbie quality, any answers received with humble gratitude!
Cheers, Syd

Hi there,
as NLEdit said, there will be loads of answers to this.
IMO i'd avoid drobo like the plague. G tech drives have served me incredibly well working on a huge variety of broadcast projects (just over the water from you in Bristol), I've had no probs with FW800 when using DVCproHD, pro res is ok, sometimes a little slow with multiple layers and of course it eats up storage space. so I'd go for 2 4tb drives, keep the backup one in a different location.
one tip that has saved me countless times is to format them as follows:-
mac os extended (not journalled)
create 2 partitions
partition 1 - make this small (1gig) and call it "drive a - do not use"
partition 2 - the rest of available storage and call "drive a"
this is because the boot sector of the drive is within the first partition and with this method if it goes down it can be re erased without losing all your footage.
If you call your backup drive the exact same name and have the exact same folder structure, you will not have to relink if you get a problem.
Ignore getting a mac mini for rendering, won't help at all in FCP. instead I would make every attempt you can at buying a mac pro rather than an imac. much more expansion/speed possibilities and a more robust solution.
best of luck
Andy

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The director wants 1080 because there's potentially going to be a 35mm blowup at the end of all this. Depending on who you ask, I've heard 720 may lose anywhere from 10-30% resolution on blowup compared to 1080.
Though it's been a back and forth decision. He's not 100% sold on 1080 (especially because we're finding few people have done it with the HVX-200) and 720 sure makes the workflow much easier.
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Do you mean 2x2TB and 2x3TB for a total internal capacity of 10TBs? Are you running Snow Leopard or something else? Actually, I took it to an authorized repair facility who ran checks and said nothing is wrong with the hardware.
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