Im curious Jack, what bad experiences did you have with the Lacie Big Disk?
Im' currently running 2x600GB FW800 LaCie Big Disks (they are hard-raided to RAID 0), one for VI, and other for all other samples. Idea was to spread out more VI collections over both drives when/if the need arises. So far no problems whatsoever. I'm taking care not to run any FW400 drives on the computer, as the FW bus only moves at the speed of the slowest interface, ie. making FW800 work like FW400 drives.
LaCie FW bus'es are the fastest around in single unit external drives, and was part of the reason I bought them in the first place. I've run SCSI before with my ProTools rig, and it works solid, but it's an aging design that seem to die out for consumer use (not enterprise server market). SATA is taking over everywhere, and I'm getting a 150 GB Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD, which is running 10k rpm on SATA, and will match in speed any (affordable) SCSI solution out there, and will set you back around 300$. This will be enough to run a shatload of VI from. I'm going to use it for ProTools as an audio recording disk, but I will prolly not be able to resist the temptation to run the VIs of it as well.
/ 10000 rpm / 16 MB / Serial ATA-150 / 4.6 ms