Pros: Quite delicious! Very fast read/write speeds, and that was the main concern for me. It peaks at whatever USB plug i plug it in. When using firewire, i transferred close to 300GB overnight, which was roughly 10-12 hours. I did the math once, it came out to around 7 MBPS

Cons: beware of plugging in the firewire when your computer's off! They are versa-firewire jacks, and give no warning, if you plug this device into your iEEE1394 slot while on, your computer will shutdown immediately!

Overall Review: High Quality construction, smooth material on the outside, aesthetically pleasing.

Pros: solid construction, stands well on its side, rubberized for surefooted grip on surfaces, works plenty fast enough for streaming audio and video

Cons: slightly noisy, otherwise none

Pros: looks nice, pretty quiet.

Cons: the Maxtor drivers hang the system after a day or so. removing them causes the drives (I got two) to spin down after an hour or two of inactivity. so back they go. a FW drive shouldn't need any drivers; the Mx installer puts kernel extensions in to enable the lame backup button which also apparently are needed to keep the thing spinning.

Overall Review: Maxtor needs an uninstaller. I had to dig pretty far to remove the various drivers/kexts. maybe the product works better on Windows...

Pros: Beats my internal HD's write speed even through the USB cable, the enclosure looks pretty cool, comes with both USB and Firewire cables. Software can create small, easy to use backups or you can use it as an extra HD (or both)

Cons: loud in high-performance mode (can be turned to silent mode with some performance decrease). A little pricey.