Hello,
I've been using this drive for 4 days (thanks to the advice of MikeC and Ksanderash) and I'm quite happy so far.
I have suspended it with some elastic cord, and even though I'm using a cheap case with not so good acoustic damping the drive is inaudible in idle. I had to open the case and put my ear right next to the harddrive (while holding the videocard's fan) to hear the idle spinning noise. Here's a HDTach screenshot with default settings:
I have set the AAM to 254; in this setting the drive's random access time is 14,9 secs. While reading, the disc produces only muted clicks in seek tests (like Victoria's).
Setting AAM to 128 increased the random access time to 17,7 secs. I wasn't particularly listening to the noise at that moment (I was more interested in access time), I have to repeat that test.
I have yet to play a game with this hard drive, though. I *may* get a bit disappointed. But so far, things seem quite fine - there's a definite drop in noise compared to my 2x 250 GB Seagates, so much that idle noise is inaudilble from my chair. While checking noise sources, stopping the video card's fan used to have no effect, but right now it's the main noise source in the PC (Palit 8800GT Sonic, stock cooler).
I can easily recommend this drive - but maybe hardcore gamers should consider the WD Caviar Blue 640 GB.