eSata HDD questions

[EtherealEntity]

Hi guys. I'm using a laptop with a 500GB 16MB cache internal hard drive.
ST9500420AS Momentus 7200.4 SATA 3Gb/s 500-GB Hard Drive | Seagate

I need to expand to an external hard drive and have some questions. I know next to nothing about computers!

I have an eSata port so will use that.

As I understand it, eSata hard drives are the same as internal hard drives so I could actually buy the same one that I already have and put it in an external enclosure.
Regardless of what actual HDD I buy - is one option usually better than the other? External HDD v.s. HDD+Enclosure?

I heard that 16MB cache is not a lot, but mine seems perfectly fine. I don't think I need to spend extra money on more. Opinions?

I have some questions on how to organise my files. As I understand, ideally you have OS drive, samples drive, and audio drive.
My 500GB drive has 100GB left.
Around 200GB of samples, 50GB music library, 20GB project files, the rest OS.

I want to run my project files from the new external drive. It will take me a long time to fill up (around 3GB per song) and I only record my own music, so another 500GB will be sufficient.

However, moving over my 20GB project files to the new drive, I would still only have 120GB left and I plan to install around 100GB more samples soon. Would it be easy for me to buy say a 1TB harddrive and SWAP it with the current internal one? Giving me 1TB internal and 500GB external. The old hard drive would then be my audio drive and I'd have 1TB for OS and samples.

As I have had good experience with my current drive, do you think buying one of those and an enclosure is a good option? Or are there other models I should look at?

Whether I buy an external HDD or a HDD+enclosure, I am not looking to spend more than £120 roughly.

Thanks!

 

[dgatwood]

Be careful when buying new 1TB drives. Only two models will fit in most laptops: the Samsung HN-M101MBB (the newest revision of the Spinpoint M8) and the Western Digital WD10JPVT (the newest version of the Scorpio Blue line). Previous models in both of those lines with remarkably similar names and model numbers are 12mm high, which are too thick to fit in many laptops.

I bought my Samsung locally at Fry's for $99 (about 61 pounds), plus eight bucks for an external USB case for the old drive. Even spending a little more for an eSATA case, you should still be way below 120 pounds unless import tariffs and VAT are a lot worse than I thought.