Anyone have any advice? I'm willing to settle for 5400rpm. Capacity is most important, after noise of course. Any FDB (fluid dynamic bearing) drives around in this capacity?

Seagate Barracuda V is your best bet. 120G available in both IDE and Serial ATA formats. Where to buy is a bit of a question as they're still not widely distrubted, but they are still the quietest (even compared to 5400rpm drives)

Operant symbol here being >, not ==. But thanks for your current advice. Now, on to the question I really asked . . .

Yup. The Maxtor DiamondMax 16 is a 5400RPM FDB drive that is available in sizes up to 160G.

They're pretty quiet. I own a DiamondMax D740X that I've S^3'd. It's inaudible unless I press my head right against the vents

Just make sure you order the one with the FDB. Check the models numbers carefully. Maxtor makes versions both with and without it.

My only fear now is that potentially such a drive might not be usable. Intel's brand spankin' new Granite Bay (E7205) doesn't support beyond ATA100. Not that I don't trust third parties to produce adapters, but anyway I think I'll stick with industry spec, not Maxtor spec.

Thank you both, gentlemen, for your kind advice.

JohnMK,

Don't loose hope. The fact that the Granite bay chipset is ATA100 doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't support the LBA 48(?) bit extensions. Ie you don't necessarily need ATA133 to get >120GB.

All I can say is check the specs!

And ATA133 is backward compatible with ATA100, if that was the problem you were thinking of. An ATA133 drive will work with your motherboard.

But its full size won't be known by the controller, true?

True. I wasn't sure from your previous post whether the size was what was troubling you, or the ATA133. You could also just add a PCI
controller card to get the 48bit addressing.

The answer to my own question is:

IBM 180GXP series, of any capacity (60-180GB, I believe)

Large capacity, -- as quiet as the Barracuda IV, almost as quiet as the slightly quieter Barracuda V.