hi gang... i got stung by the whole WD scorpio stuttering drive thing... i now want to use an external 3.5 drive but connected to the internal sata port as my main drive....done a lot of research and here's what i have gathered regarding what i need to accomplish this. thought maybe if someone can help answer my questions this can be a guide for others

option one

-use a bare 3.5 drive
-get a female sata (for inside the ps3) to male sata cable, plug into bare drive
-somehow power the drive... not sure if they make a cable with a normal wall socket on one end and a hard drive power connector on the other?

option two

-put bare drive in hard drive enclosure. this should solve the power problem as i assume all hard drive enclosures come with wall plugs
-if using enclosure, i think these are all Esata (as opposed to just sata) which is a different connector
-accordingly need either cable with a female sata connector on one end, and a male Esata on the other end
-or may use a female sata to male sata (neither is esata) cable but then need a little converter adapter which takes the sata connection and outputs an esata connection... from here, you plug in the esata into the adapter into the hard drive enclosure

Any opinions on which is preferable? right now i am having a hard time finding the cables and or adapter...

Also, there's been lots of debate on this but i believe the largest size possible for a main hard drive is 1tb, not 1.5 or 2tb... i actually have a WD 1tb black drive kicking around however if 2tb can be used i'd prefer to get one of those...

so any thoughts? do i have it right? if so would especially appreciate where to get the cables...