I had one of these for years and never had a problem. I got lazy and started putting it in my bad with the cable connected. Of course, the strain eventually broke the usb port off the motherboard. Forunately, the design is such that you can detatch the MB from the hard drive and replace it. I was having trouble finding the exact MB so I brought a used unit with the same part number and simply swapped the MB. All my data has been retrieved for only 34 bucks vs sending my drive to a recovery company that charges up to 1200 if you are dumb enough to pay them.