Pros: Used this board for a home NAS/virtualization platform. Coupled nicely with the CSE-731i-300B case - a single ribbon cable from the case front panel connects to the mobo headers for power button and all status lights. I'm running Solaris 11 (mostly for ZFS) and Virtualbox and was pleased to find all the drivers were present with the OS. A generic SATA DVD works fine, and all 6 SATA ports work as hot-plug AHCI - yes I've hot-swapped one. Dual LAN is nice, and a dedicated port for IPMI is the best. I can't say enough good things about the remote management capability.

Cons: None

Overall Review: My rig: - SUPERMICRO CSE-731i-300B case - SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O LGA 1155 mobo - 4x Kingston KVR1333D3E9S/4G (16GB) memory - Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz - 3x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31500341AS 1.5TB 7200 RPM in RAID-Z - StarTech SATABAY425BK 4 Drive 2.5in Hot Swap Backplane - 2x older 250GB drives mirrored for OS - 1 3.5" in the drive cage and 1x 2.5" drive in the hot swap backplane - SATA DVD

Pros: Small size is convenient. Power from USB means no extra power cord. Good size disk for low cost. Looks nice.

Cons: Drive failed after around 6 weeks, the usual clicking noises accompanied by Windows errors in the system log. The RMA process for WD is pretty good, but you pay for shipping back to WD and you lose any data on the disk. I've been running the "new" RMA replacement for a few weeks now and I'm already hearing the familiar clicking...

Overall Review: I used this drive only for backups. It had activity for ~30 minutes a day while it sync'd with my other PC. I didn't move it from the time I plugged it in until it failed, so the failure wasn't from daily handling. How could it possibly hold up being tossed around in a backpack/laptop bag? How many RMAs will I need to make over the 3 year warranty...

Pros: I was immediately impressed with the solid construction of this unit. The drive cage and sleds are solid metal and don't feel cheap. It easily mounted in a 5.25" bay, but I couldn't use the tool-less mounting rails from my computer case because they interfered with the drive sleds. The unit does come with shallow screws that allow the cage to be securely mounted without affecting operation of the drive sleds. I put 9.5mm thick laptop drives in the sleds, and there's plenty of room for thicker drives. The sleds fit nicely and latch securely in place. The sleds don't lock, but my house isn't exactly a high security environment. This is a nice solution to get some extra storage in a case with limited drive bays.

Cons: none

Overall Review: I have pretty large exhaust fan on my PC case, so I turned off the fan on the drive cage. The faces of the drive sleds are perforated, and I can feel pretty good airflow at the front of the drive sleds.

Pros: This drive is relatively cheap as SSDs go, but is big enough for a primary OS drive with all your applications. I trust Samsung parts, and they make all the main components of these drives themselves. I haven't done any real benchmarks, but I will say the overall performance of my Dell Vostro 3350 is noticeably better. The Windows performance rating on the disk speed is 7.9 (max score). Newegg was awesome, as usual. Order shipped next day, and free shipping arrived 2 days early.

Cons: none

Overall Review: I cloned my existing Win7 hard drive to the new disk using WinPE. The Intel RST software caused me some initial problems - after booting to the Win7 desktop the system would freeze. I assumed it was a driver issue because when I booted in safe mode everything worked fine. I didn't want to re-install Windows from scratch, so to fix the problem I had to use the device manager from safe mode to remove all the Intel related chipset and storage devices. Then I rebooted and uninstalled the corresponding Intel software from the control panel. Instead of re-installing all the Intel software, I downloaded and extracted the latest Intel drivers, then installed just device drivers by using the device manager with "Update Driver Software" for each unknown component. After all this, my laptop is stable and fast. I also replaced my wife's laptop drive with one of these. There were no issues with that replacement - just cloned the drive and all was well. The performance difference on her laptop was also significant. Windows is just much more responsive for all tasks.

Pros: Drives were packed in individual boxes with molded plastic to protect from damage during shipping. I bought three of these and none were DOA. Transfer speeds seem pretty solid - I'm running raidz (software RAID5) and have seen over >180MB/s from the set with each drive posting ~350 IOPs. I have over 700GB used so far and scrubbing the zpool returns no bad blocks.

Cons: None

Overall Review: I've always had good luck with Seagate drives. I have a pair of Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS drives that are coming up on 5 years old and have never had a problem. Knock on wood!

Pros: Put 4 sticks in a SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O with a Xeon E3-1230 V2. No problems

Cons: None