Since switching over to iMac (only one drive), I have kept all of my samples on an external firewire drive. Space is getting tight, and a friend of mine recommended keeping drum sounds on one drive and band samples on another. They are both Firewire drives with 7200 rpm. Any drawbacks as far as read speed? Should I keep them all on one drive?

If you are loading all of the sounds into RAM, it shouldn't really matter if you store the files on an multiple external drives.  Since you have 2 GB of RAM, make sure you are [u]not[/u] using DFD, which is enabled by default when using Kontakt.  The problem with firewire or USB 2.0 is it limits the speed of the drive much lower than a 7200rpm drive is capable of. 

If space is getting tight, hard drives are really cheap now.  You can pick up a bare 160 GB drive for $50, or a 320 GB drive for $100 at newegg.com  You can open the case of your firewire drive and swap it out. 

Running with a similar idea... Ipod's are really just external 5400 HD's with basic selection functions, right? If you have 2 GB of RAM and aren't using DFD, could you store your samples on your Ipod and not risk burning it out. I know this may sound stupid, but it would help not to have to look for an outlet for my external or have to lug around one extra things for that little lick I want to check out. I've already tried it, and it works fine. I'm really just curious if I'm about to blow my Ipod up. Peace...

Guys, don't forget about the other big concern with drives -- that's bus speed.  For example, if you hook up the fastest darn raptor drive via USB1.1, you're going to hate life.

An ipod will work, but don't expect reasonable performance.  Besides, I think it's a 4200 rpm.

Performance in what aspect... How fast samples load, skips in playback, etc? I'll also post any issues I run into as they happen. I figure I'll give it a try or a little while. Peace...

Performance in the realm of how fast it transfers what it reads.  You might be able to load samples into ram fine - it might take a little bit of time, but that should work, and the performance is now with your RAM.  If it has to go to the drive for anything, expect poor performance.