A: Answer Hello Robinhood, yes it will work fine with USB 2.0 ports (albeit a wee slower but the average person using older tech wouldn't notice the difference anyways). I actually have it hooked up to an older micro-desktop that I've tricked out to serve as a backup and tertiary storage hub and no problems with speed upon access or writing files. Re: WD reliability, the HD playing field amongst the brands has become fairly level over the past few years. If you read up you will find the different brands all source from the same 3 manufacturers. All have chances to fail and unless you want to put out $$$ for tippy top of the line, just make sure you keep the firmware updated, run occasional diagnostics, and keep 2 *different* units as backup. (Never buy 2 HDs from same brand at same time - you want different batches, different manufactured times, so as to avoid 2 lemons from same batch). Hope this helps :)

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