If all your media is on your second, non-system, drive, that’s okay, especially as its a SATA drive. Unless that is your drive is almost all filled up, in which case that could easily cause problems.
I’d check out the new Pioneer DVR-111D. You can get them at Newegg.com for $37. Plextor makes good products, but Pioneer has been the leading manufacturer of DVD drives since time began.
And yes, you could do the whole job in FCP, but ver 4.5 does not handle large pix very well, and its rendering engine is apparently not nearly as good or as fast as FCP 5.
Not enough info Jeff. What is the drive config that you are capturing to? Are you by any chance capturing from the camera via firewire while at the same time using firewire drives on one of the built-in firwire ports?