This Seagate HD is excelent. I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 and i only have to use the power+data USB. I suggest reformatting the drive to NTFS if you are a Windows XP user. The factory format is FAT32 which XP does recognize but can only format to 32GB.The only drawback to this drive is if you have a USB2.0 Card connected to your motherboard you will need to connect both "power only" and ""power+Data" to Two USB ports.(This is only for Desktop computers and not Laptops) The only way to bypass this is if you have USB 2.0 ports directly on the motherboard. I have not tried the HD with just my notebook battery so not sure on battery life while HD is connected.