Does anyone know if esata is as fast as the Internal version? If so I would be very interested in replacing my optical drive with a ssd and adding a esata for an external optical drive or another ssd. Would this work?
Yes, eSATA is 3Gb/s, just like SATA II is. I'm not sure are there eSATA 6Gb/s controllers/devices available yet but sooner than later there will but even 3Gb/s is sufficient for SSD.