Why did I think it might be a Maxtor? <sigh>. Guess
Been there, got the furrows in the brow. I went out and bought an Iomega USB2 external 300GB drive. I had nothing but problems, and couldn't understand it till I opened it up. Maxtor inside. The caddy was by Iomega, though.
There's a Cat 5 cable from my study to the attic (behind the bookcase so nobody can see it). Up in the attic there's a prehistoric PC whose sole purpose is backup. For that, it works well.