I've only had it about a week but it works fine and with winXP just plug it in and go.. It wouldn't work with my powered USB hub though, had to plug it directly to computer.
It's quiet and even with USB1 it is quite fast copying files.
It is so tiny but it has 40 GB. Only about the size of my hand.
I was going to get western digital but there was so much problem with them breaking so I got this one instead.
I really like it so far. No of switch but it doesn't run unless you access the drive.
Now if I could only find a GOOD image drive copy system!

Unfortunately I didn't buy this from Amazon because I needed it right away, but I plugged it in and it works like a jewel.

I'll check back once in a while and report further as it goes along like I did with my DLink Wireless Router, but right now its perfect.

Great job Firelite!

Although I'm confused why the 20 GB model which is smaller would cost more, I'm thrilled even with the bigger size of the 40 GB model.

I bought this external drive when my music collection grew to 10GB and my iPod was only half full... but the puny 20GB hard drive on my laptop was pretty much maxed out. I love the fact that the drive can draw power from my USB port... the only bad thing is that since my PC has USB 1.1, rather than 2.0, data transfer is very slow. Then again, it could be that I was transferring more than 7GB of data... since my comptuer told me that it would take more than two hours, I just went to sleep, and when I woke up in the morning, all was done!

This thin, light HD is unbelievable. I have had it for only a couple of hours and copied my entire music library on to it. I sat at the computer doing other things and barely heard it running. My only regret is not purchasing the 80GB model. When I run out of room, I know what to buy next.

Its small form factor makes this USB-powered 2.5 inch hard drive an excellent travel companion. If your laptop provides (sufficiently) powered USB ports, you will not need an optional separate power supply for the drive.

While the drive comes packaged with a power chord that would be fed from a PS/2 port, this would not help users such as me who don't have a PS/2 port on their laptop; luckily mine provides enough power on the USB port to operate the drive.

One thing missing in the package is a basic backup/restore/sync utility, i.e. a stripped down version of LinkPro PowerSync; other manufacturers have already started to pay consideration to this common use of external hard drives.

While it may be cheaper to burn a couple dozen CDs for a backup, it is time consuming, does not provide for the convenience of instant access, and would result in a lot of extra weight to be carrying around while travelling.

If you need to backup large files (over 2GB) under Windows, you will have to convert the drive from its native FAT32 to NTFS. Converting the format is pretty straightforward if you're using Windows XP's "convert" utility [go to the command prompt, type in "CONVERT /?" and you'll see all the options].