Pros: Huge amount of storage...formatted at 931.4GB on my Mac after I overwrote the entire drive once to map out any surface flaws (BTW, that took over six hours on an iMac Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33). Fast...benchmarking sites say it's just a tick off the 10K RPM WD Raptor drives. Subjectively, I can tell you it's a real speedster and I've had no skipped frames whatsoever when capturing video via FireWire 800. Extremely quiet...I have it in an external WiebeTech case with no fan and it's unbelievably quiet. But I may move it to a case with a fan...it runs a bit warmer than most drives.

Cons: Relatively high cost per GB of storage here at initial roll-out. It'll come down in price as the pipeline fills and Seagate's 1TB drive with 5 year warranty starts becoming available in quantity to compete with this drive. Same situation as we saw when the 750GB drive first came out.

Overall Review: 1. With this much storage on one drive, one should definitely start giving consideration to backing up the contents via a RAID array or other means. No drive lasts forever and when this one fails, you're going to lose a LOT of data. 2. There are some nuts below my review claiming this drive is loud. Don't believe it!! They either have an agenda or are mistaking an external box's fan for drive noise. Or they are "reviewing" a drive they don't have. This drive is unbelievably smooth and quiet. You literally won't know it's running. Look at any responsible review site for like Tom's for the real deal on this drive.

Pros: As an addendum to my review below, I thought folks interested in the Hitachi brand might like to read this article I ran across today (7/11/07): You may disagree with the author's methodology but I still think it provides an interesting comparison of customer satisfaction when looking the various brand-name drives. The author's conclusions mirror my own...that Hitachi drives are very, very good despite only having a three-year warranty versus Seagate's five-year warranty.

Cons: I've found no cons to this drive (I now have three) other than cost/GB of storage. But the price is falling rapidly...my first cost $439, the second $399 and the third was $355. I'd look for Newegg to hit that price point soon since a reputable competitor now has them in stock and shipping for $355.

Overall Review: If you can wait a few months, also look at the Seagate 1TB drive with five-year warranty shipping in the late-3rd/early-4th quarter.