Pros: I've owned 4 external drives from the "WD Elements" series over the years. 3 are older 1.5 TB, and 1 is my newest 3 TB one. All excellent and problem free!

Cons: I was about to buy yet another 3 TB drive from the same series, when I discovered that NewEgg just jacked up the price from month ago! What the f- ?? I cancelled the order, and I'm buying it from another major company, which offers the same price that NewEgg was offering a month ago. And, no, it was NOT a special; just a regular purchase. Seriously, NewEgg?!?

Pros: It's a fairly standard USB 3 external drive. The important parts work as they should.

Cons: Appears to be powered by a small star. An ultrabright status LED sits at the heart of the device. A plastic light pipe brings a fraction of that light to a status dot on the front, however the whole edge is grillwork for airflow and the light spills out everywhere. Incredibly bright, and the case is very stubborn so I haven't yet managed to pry it off and cover or desolder the LED. As it's backing up a bedroom system I have to unplug it at night (or make the call that all that airflow was design overkill and block it all), which is defeating my attempts to set up an automatic nightly backup system with a large drive like this. Don't know why the LED itself wasn't placed on the front to make the old electrical tape solution to bright lights easier to implement, kind of ridiculous.

Anyway, if you plan to use this where you sleep or where unwanted light could be an issue, look for another model.

Pros: Great external HDD. The first day I got the 3TB version of this WD drive I written over 2TB of data on it. The write speeds were as consistent as usb 3.0 can be. The drive is great and I was able to transfer all my data. Might get another one for a back up back up.

Cons: None so far. Will update when needed

Pros: I can't speak for the durability of the drive, but so far it has been plug, and play. Windows 7 backup doesn't work on it. Windows problem I think. I haven't used the trial backup software, so I can't rate that either. Works as a back up drive, as it should.

Cons: I need to track down why Windows 7 is unable to backup to the hard drive. I used another back up utility that seems to work fine.