The manufacturer of the JM20337 chip (JMicron) that this product often uses and many other products contain has a serious fault that causes data corruption. Jmicron are aware of the fault and often tell people to remove the R15 resistor on the circuit board to resolve the fault. Most say that this solved the problem with the product but some still say they had errors. Ask yourself if you can be bother to buy this and start tinkering about with the circuit board to get it working...

This product has a fatal flaw: it uses the JM20337 chip; which is associated with data corruption problems. It sometimes returns a zero-value error code which most systems treat as "no error" and continue despite some of the data being invalid.

It can also "hang" during intensive I/O requiring a USB bus reset before responding again. This is inconvenient but not as serious as the silent data corruption problem.

Using it on a Windows 7 laptop despite this not being mentioned on the packaging as a compatible OS and everything running fine.

I have kept several IDE HD's from my computer building days which I am looking to be rid of but wanted to make sure they were fully erased before disposing them.

Am happy with this purchase.

Excellent. Just what I was looking for / hoping for. Many of my old computer files were trapped on an internal disc drive from a computyer that no longer works. With this product I was able to recover and continue using my precious files. Thank You Maplin !

I purchased this item to use with a western Digital 750GB external HDD, the mini USB socket was damaged so i opened the case removed the small circuit board (Power and mini USB) from the sata connector and connected this product....works perfecty have also tried it with some older ide internal HDD's and again worked like a charm....I can recommend anyone who has an external drive with a mini usb that has been damaged to use this....