Hi, Slashdot ran a piece recently about a review that rated the noise levels of a bunch of IDE drives. Click the older articles link at http://slashdot.org/ and search for "noise" and you should find it. Also search for "quiet". Making quieter computers has been discussed fairly regularly on slashdot.
I have a Quantum 10,000 RPM SCSI Ultra160 drive and it's extremely quiet and runs cool, which is very surprising for a 10,000 RPM drive. It's the VP32210, not sure what the brand name of that is. I plan to eventually mod all my computers so they are quieter. I am a big fan of laptops because they are so quiet. The fan in my compaq presario 1800T only starts when it gets hot (rarely) and my iBook doesn't have a fan at all. You are probably better off using more than one hard drive to make all your space than using a single drive. It will be more expensive, but you will have less to lose if a drive fails. I think you would do well to get a RAID. Firewire's being nice for being so flexible and making it easy to attach disks externally. I have used SCSI drives almost exclusively for years before I recently got started with firewire for that reason. I never cared much for IDE drives because they have to be mounted inside the cases and have such unpleasant cables. Even Ultra160 scsi can be external. Mike -- Michael D. Crawford GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting http://www.goingware.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]