Pros: Good storage GB/per$, nice form factor (subjective I suppose).

Cons: Very slow compared to other external USB drives, throughtput is approximately 60% of that of Mxxxor and Buslink devices I own. They tent to "forget" their on/off state, which is supposed to be automatic.

Overall Review: I purchased 2 of the 500GB drives, to compliment my already large assortment of Mxxxor and Bxxxink devices. Both devices worked properly upon installation. Upon initial setup, I tested bandwidth and found both devices almost identical to each other (a good thing), but could only achieve approx. 60% of the throughput of my other external USB drives. In fact, data transfer on these devices is only about 15% faster than my Mxxxor "network shared storage" drives (400GB each, connected via 10/100 ethernet). Large backups consistently take almost twice as long on the WD than on any of my other USB drives (24 total), and 4 times longer than my fastest USB drives. My other "complaint" - and not a big deal - is that they seem to run unusually hot, and their little external power adapters run *really* hot, which I believe will shorten their life span. I've already contacted WD about purchasing a couple spare power adapters, as I believe the drives will outlive the adapters.