Internal IDE 7200rpm and external USB2 7200rpm. It works up to a hundred tracks or so, above that it's time to consolidate/bounce the edited audio.
I use an eSATA drive. It was horrendous trying to find a setup that worked with no problems, but I got it all figured out now(my MB eSata hardware caused problems, went with a separate card and had problems, found another PCIe card that works great). I'm sure it would catch on more if eSATA ports were a standard, but they aren't. It's alot easier for someone with a Mac or PC to just plug into their fire-wire port.
I initially had a bitch of time getting my external eSATA drive bays working with Win 7 x64. I ended up getting a Rosewill RC-216 controller card to replace what I had and it now works without any issues.
It's not unusual for me to record to SD cards.
Huh... does it work well? I tried to record to a flash drive once and it didn't really work.
Yeah I think all the early issues have finaly been worked out.
It is very nice to have internal data transfer speeds outside of the PC though. I probably won't go back to a FW drive now.