I know there was plenty trouble with these drive.. have there been any development as I cannot find a recent/current thread hintin toward wether these drive are usable or not..

They are compatible with unRAID and safe to use now.  Early releases caused data corruption. Most will recommend to upgrade the firmware.

Reference threads

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9865.0

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9339.0

 

Note:  Synology listed the drives in their compatibility list with the note that any drive manufactured before Dec 2010 must have the fw upgraded.

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9339.msg112090#msg112090

These drives are very nice.

 

I have several hardware raids completely populated with them (the largest array at 16 drives) and several in unraid.

 

I have yet to have one fail.

 

 

these used to be my favorite drive, now i am leaning to the hitachi 3tb 5400

I have these drives and haven't had any problems.

Me too, 3 drives and no problems. Also this drives runing more cold than others WD drives i have.

I have 16 of them in my new ESXi based unRAID box... no problems and nice and cool!