eSATA Pc Cardbus

I currently have a Toshiba Satellite A135-s2326 and im looking to get an esata cardbus. im not exactly tech saavy but i can figure my way around a cpu n laptop most of the time. I've been searching online and i have a few questions:

1) I want to purchase an external hard drive, 500+ gb, to play games and such, mostly Sim types, but reading through the 3 year old ATI Radeon Xpress 200M thread, which i have, i understand that a regular usb 2.0 connection is more or less inefficient when playing games through usb on external hdd. So i was wondering if an esata pc card would fit inside my 16-bit drive. Most, if not all i've seen, say 32-bit compatible but not 16?

2) I have also been reading that since the pc card slot on my Toshiba is relatively slow, eSata would only be slightly faster than usb and not achieving the maximum 1.5/3gbps. is that true and if so/not, would it be worth it to get the card and esata ehdd or just stick with usb?

3) Also, but unrelated, which external hard drive has the best satisfaction? I've read, what feels like, all reviews and all external hdds seem to be split 50/50. Personally i was looking for 500-750gb for less than $100, very cheap so what, but have come to no conclusion.

Any help or input is appreciated...

Thanks.

 

the fastest conventional hard drives get around 120MB/s (which is about 1gbps).

USB2 will get around 25MB/s.

eSATA even through a PCMCIA card will get around 45MB/s or possibly more.

USB also has higher CPU utilisation in most Intel chipsets, because I think it's emulated.

However, note that whether you go eSATA or USB2, it will only change loading times and other gameplay should not be affected.

 

Is that a significant difference in speed in cpu talk or is it not worth it?

 

What do you mean by CPU talk>?

 

Is 45mbps noticeably faster than 25mbps?

 

How to remove RAM (at 35 seconds in the video), though usually I just use my fingers and otherwise do the same thing.

Probably not that noticeable besides during installation, unless the game loads a lot during gameplay.

 

My laptop is almost unusable and snail-paced slow at this point so now i at least know how to change the RAM to make it run faster. Cant wait.

I Mostly want to play games like Simcity, Sims, and Tycoon type games and judging by what i can remember from my other consoles, most of these dont load too much (except sims) so i guess i'll hold off on the eSATA for a while.

You've really helped a lot!!!