Never had a problem and Great Price

I have been using my Seagate FreeAgent 500 GB Hard drive with the USB 2.0 interface for over 6 months and have not had a bit of problem with it. My computer sees it immediately upon inserting the USB cable and transfers are very quick.

The drive uses very little desk space by sitting vertically in its case. It is quiet and runs cool. The power supply is a switching supply so it also runs cool and wastes less power (saves money!)

I have created several dozen DVDs of different sizes and I use this drive to store them on (my computer Hard drives are too small) When I need to retrieve one, I just plug the drive in and go. It is also very nice to be able to read from the hard drive and write directly to the DVD when burning a copy (USB 2.0 is fast enough.)

I use a little less than half of the drive for backups of my personal data (tax returns, photos, etc.)

I have read a lot of reviews about DOA (dead on arrival) drives and I have to wonder if that is not caused by rough handling during shipping? Being in electronics for 35 years, I have seen what can happen to ANY electronic device when it has gone through shipping.

Others have complained of failures after using the drive for a short time. All hard drives (internal and external) are susceptible to damage from rough use. Make sure your drive is positioned away from kids, pets, spills, etc. in a place that won't be knocked over or bumped or hit, even accidentally. This rule applies to any hard drive, especially external ones since they haven't got an entire computer case around them to offer protection.

For the record, I am using Windows XP Professional on a Pentium 4 3GHz computer.

I paid $99 for my external drive after mail-in rebate, but I saw an advertisement for the same drive for $89 with an instant rebate in the paper today (from Office Depot) I am considering buying another one at that price!