Pros: I bought three of these drives to be mounted in a Synology network drive for a RAID 5 configuration (Look for that review under Synology). The drives arrived the next day (!) and were very well packaged in multiple layers of bubble wrap and styro-flakes. Brand-new drives, which came with a tiny jumper installed to configure the drive for 1.5 gps. The drives have now been running for more than a week under almost constant load. The RAID 5 configuration gives me about 2/3 of the capacity (960 GB) as usable space, the rest is security parity. After the initial integrity check (which ran all night), I started by making a manual test backup of one large drive with 90 GB and, once I had the Synology backup working, backed up the two workstations in the house, a total of about 300 GB from 4 local and one network drive. Very quiet operation, thanks to the Synology running very cool and I have noticeably faster performance on all network file operations, streaming music, photos or file cop

Cons: The posted failure rate still concerns me somewhat, many users complained about failures after a week to month. The tiny jumper that configures the drive for 1.5gbs is hard to get out and the drive should not come limited out of the box. They should provide the jumper for those users who need to configure it for less speed.

Overall Review: I spent a lot of time selecting this drive, because the perceived failure rate - looking at the negative reviews here at Newegg - is around 20-40% for all of these high performance drives. But then I realized that disappointed users are more likely to post a review than those who had success. If any drive manufacturer had a 30% failure rate, they'd be out of business in no time. However, the failure rate is still high from the absolute number of negative reviews, I suspect that it is around 5% for all drives sipped. That number needs to come down, but I suggest that everyone else takes the negative ratings for what they are: a manifest of real problems and cautions, but not a representative statistic.

Pros: I finally bought the Synology CubeStation after doing a lot of research and deciding that I don't want any of the NAS that have tons of negative reviews posted, mostly for non-existing service and high failure rates. The 407 is expensive, but I have too many irreplaceable photos and a very large music collection to loose any of it. I run a RAID on my main workstation, but have no security on the other PCs. I ran a Maxtor 300GB shared drive for 2 years, but it occasionally hangs up, is slow and data are lost if the drive croaks. The Synology is very easy to set up, has a great design, drives run very cool, very quiet operation and so far no problems at all. Took me 20 min to set up, all night for drive check and another 10 hours for the first 300 GB backup of all PCs in the house. Also, the Synology is not limited to 1 or 2 GB, you can fully load it with 4x 750GB. Very nice web AJAX interface. Highly recommended!

Cons: Inserting or exchanging drives is a little too cumbersome, with access from the back and all cables in the way. There are other solutions, which provide front access and slick drive bays (DROBO, HP Mediasmart). Also, hot-swap would be a nice touch, although I hope to never have to use it! And, of course, this is too pricey for the mainstream. Backup software is too limited, doesn't allow to save multiple schedules / backup schemes.

Overall Review: The box looks better in a real office and is smaller than it appears in ads. This is a great solution for home or small business and for those people who are willing to pay for peace of mind and a real backup solution. Make sure to upgrade the firmware first thing, it is substantially more usable and powerful than what comes in the box!