Internal vs External

Ok, just bought a 80GB WD Caviar. Going to use it solely for a few Linux distros I wanna play with. Will I egt the same speed if I use it internally via SATA or externally via eSATA? I ahve an eSATA port on the rear of my motherboard. Figured getting a cheap enclosure and using eSata would be nice just because I could take it with me obviously...


Thanks!

eSATA is surprisingly fast compard to USB2 and I don't think you would be disappointed in the speed. Doing backups externally I bought a few eSATA brackets because I liked the speed boost.

Yeah, I have a Seagate Freeagent Pro hooked up to a cheapo eSATA express card, and according to hdtune it averages 20-30mb faster transfer speed then the 300gb seagate (I think its a 7200.10 series) in my desktop, so yeah, they are pretty fast.

I picked up an Antec MX-1 for use with my laptop and absolutely love it. Actively cooled, quiet, looks good, USB and eSATA, all for $35 from amazon. It is a great buy.

^^ thanks i'm liking that antec, think i'm gonna get one.

I'm considering getting an external hard drive for my laptop. I will mostly be using it for backup, but since I have a new DSLR I have a lot of new 12mb+ RAW images to transfer. I have an XPS M1530 (in sig), so I don't have an eSATA port on the computer. Would an eSATA express card bottleneck the speed of a 3GB/s hard drive? If the express card will limit the transfer speeds, then I'll just get a small 2.5 inch portable hard drive. But... if the express card will be significantly faster, then I'll buy an HD, enclosure, and a eSATA express card. Anyone know the average transfer rate of a hard drive through an express card?