I have the Burly hotswap bay from MacGurus. It's been rock-solid for years. MacGurus recommends the following drive prep:
http://www.macgurus.com/productpages...ZeroDrives.php
Using about 18 Seagate drives over the last few years, I've had no total crashes, and only one occurrence of corrupt data. Use Diskwarrior occasionally, and run regular backups.
Three drives looks good to me. I haven't noticed any performance difference between SATA and eSATA. Buy a Burly! You'll like it.