Don't know what kind of hard drive to buy

i'm looking to expand my computer. i'm way past the point of having no more space left and i've found some pretty good deals on 300+ GB hard drives, but i don't know which ones will work in my computer.
the hard drive currently in my computer is a 180GB ultra ATA/100 (7200 rpm)
the problem is that, aside from rpm (revolutions per minute), i have no idea what any of this means. does the drive i buy have to be ATA/100? or can i buy ann ATA/300? what is the difference? does the ultra ATA have anything to do with it? because some of them just say ATA, or serial ATA.
i really don't want to spend the money, have it shipped, and get it open only to find out that i bought one that won't work with my machine.
i'm sure the answer to this question is pretty obvious, but no one ever explained it to me, and i'm just becoming more confused trying to find the answer myself through google.
thank you in advance!

is a bus a port for a hard drive? cause i have four of those. a guy at the mac genius bar explained that to me once when my tower was open. showed me where everything was and kind of explained what it did. i can put four hard drives in my computer. but does that mean that there is a certain one of the three remaining slots i have to put the new hard drive in? because i'm keeping the old one as well. no sense in wasting 180G of space.
and since you obviously have a pretty good handle on this whole thing, which of these drives looks better to you?
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=928341
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=803402
i know the bigger one is also slightly less expensive, but it has 8MB while the other one is ten dollars more and 20G less, but has 16MB
how important is that, really? and can my computer even make use of it since it's pretty old?
thank you so much for all the help you've given so far.

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