I have 1 Esata port on my PC and had no idea what it was for. I noticed normal sata cables won't fit into it. Now I know what they are for
Only thing is, pretty much every external HD I have seen has been usb only
Take a look around on newegg there are a few with esata.But you can also just get a external encloser that has esata and a nice size drive.From what i remember there where a few of them when I was looking back in Nov.
If you are concerned about HD failure, build a RAID 5 to improve performance and reliability. 1 TB WD HD is selling at $99 on newegg and comes with free shipping.