I had to open the case and check what Rptor i have, its a 00FLA2.

If it ha faster seeks the seek noise will probably be louder, i doubt idle noise will be significantly different though.. But you never know

Just so you know, there definitely will be a new raptor starting on 3rd january 06. matbe.com directly asked WD about that. see http://www.matbe.com/actualites/12087/western-digital-raptor-150-go/
The beast will feature 16mb cache, SATA2 and 150GB capacity.
its retail price would be 320$ (prices in € and in $ tend to be rougly equal).

if it is still as silent as the old one, I am buying !

Yeah... it was posted a rumour about this on [H]ard|Forum a while ago, glad to see that it was a well founded rumour

The revision 00FLC0 is supposedly quieter than the revision 00FLA1 according to Storagereview. Hopefully the 00FLC0 is as quiet if not quieter than the 00FLA2 revision. I have the 00FLC0 which I will be using in my new system. BTW how loud are the 7200.7 Seagate SATA Barracuda drives. I have that drive and was wondering how it compares to the raptor.


*The noise was measured at idle.

I have a 74gb and 150gb Raptor running side by side right now. The 150gb is audible when busy, while the 74gb is almost impossible to hear in my Antec P180. That doesn't mean it's silent, it means the massive steel enclosure that is the P180 blocks out the 74gb one well but the 150gb is just a little bit louder.

The 150gb consistently runs 6C hotter than the 74gb; right now it's 40C and the 74gb is 34C. On a 95F day with no AC running and the windows open the 150gb Raptor got to 44C. Again, that's with an active fan pulling air across it from behind in the P180 wind tunnel.

On speed, both Raptors seem to run just as fast - I used to boot off of the 74gb Raptor - Windows doesn't seem to boot any faster or slower off of the 150gb Raptor. I believe official reviews show the 150gb to be occasionally faster but it's an unnoticable difference.