Yes I own one WD6400AAKS... This is day and night compared to the aforementioned WD3200AAKS I own. That's why I have doubts regarding its (present and future) "health"...
Edit: I've got in contact with WD. My description of the noise made the drive elligible for RMA, but on the other hand, the tech stated that relatively high temperature is normal for this drive.
I'll return it to the shop for exchange, hoping I can find a nice 11 ribs B3 drive there.
Update: The shop was OK to exchange the disk, so we tested another one of the same model (there was no "nice 11 ribs B3" available) -> Same result
So forget about 00L9A0! The worst sounding recent drive I've owned.
I've taken a 320GB Maxtor single-platter instead, which is much much quieter both at idle and at seek, temperature is 35°C at load, but it's a bit worst performance-wise though...
I think WD made a big mistake
by putting single-platter in the (almost) same big and light casing as multiple-platter drive. The drives feels too light, like empty. This is inducing a lot of resonance (the "finger-touch test"), the casing playing the role of an amplifier.
Seagate/Maxtor on the other way have reduced the casing size almost by half and their single-platter drives feel more solid and are heavier. I think that's the reason why their HDD, noisier
on the paper, are much quieter than WD's in real-life.
Hope my sharings will help some.
Cheers,
Alex.