Also, the ST31000528AS blew away both of the older drives on 1MiB transfers. However, that's to be expected as it has a much higher transfer rate and 32MiB of cache. Maybe its loudness compared to the ST3120026A is excusable as even though the ST31000528AS is 2-platter, I know the HDA to be almost identical to that of 4-platter 7200.11. At least it has very low vibration...