I offered this hard drive (500GB) to my father who uses it to store all his photos. The same goes elsewhere, the cable is over (so I took an extension, for safety), but no problem for the connection and no recognition problem in the installation (on XP). One little thing: I had to disconnect and reconnect after installation but no worries. My father is using it since 2012 christmas or four months to date, the hard drive is permanently connected to the computer because my father refuses to part with it. I do not say that he fell in love, but it is certain that he really appreciates the point of preferring to its internal drives. Besides its appearance, with its lines and materials of the case, although sober, is rather pleasant to the eye and does not "gadget".
For those that might be interested, it is an internal hard drive Seagate ST950032 5AS contained in this LaCie. On Amazon, it is found around 57.