A fast external drive is a must when editing video on a laptop in Final Cut (on a desktop it could be a second internal drive). The least expensive way was to get an external Firewire hard drive enclosure and put a spare laptop hard drive in it.
Nice...I keep all my photos on external hard drives. Have about 4 and keep all my images on at least two of them so if one crashes I have backup until I can get them burned on a CD.