v2000 with Celeron 360

FACTORS AFFECTING DRIVE NOISE

Until about 12 to 24 months ago, the majority of hard drives on the market used ball-bearing motors, which had a characteristic high pitched whine and other objectionable airborne noise. Since then, the industry has shifted to much quieter FDB (Fluid Dynamic Bearing) motors, with the result that most recent drives are significantly quieter than older drives, sometimes by as much as 10 dBA@1m. All major drive manufacturers now use FDB motors in their current lineups. If you have a typical non-FDB drive that's more than 12~24 months old, the simplest way to achieve lower noise (and improved performance) is to swap it for a new drive, almost any new drive.

There are three other factors that affect drive noise:

The number of platters in the drive. The acoustic difference between a single platter drive and a four platter drive is much smaller than between a ball-bearing drive and a FDB drive. In other words, the noise penalty for using a higher capacity drive is not great, especially with FDB bearings. Still, the quietest drives are single platter FDB models.

The difference between idle and seek noise. While a drive idling quietly may not be intrusive, if seek noise is considerably louder than idle noise, it will certainly be noticeable. The smaller the difference between seek and idle noise, the less audible the drive will be.

Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM). This technology sacrifices some seek latency in favor of softer, quieter seeks. The performance hit is often small enough that AAM is well worth using. Almost all manufacturers these days allow AAM to be enabled, although its effectiveness varies wildly from drive to drive. Not all manufacturers provide a utility to enable and adjust AAM, but almost all drives work with Hitachi's feature tool.

With all honesty it the RPM really is minor in the noise dissipation, it will only make the drive faster. Noise is contributed from design or default.

Seagate - the best drives in my opinion (some have been known to be noisy, but I have never had one fail or die)
Hitachi - Decent drives; I like their high rpm ones for performance. Good reliability; only a few dead ones.
Fujitsu - Mediocre. Failure rate pretty high relative to other brands. Lots of dead ones, right after warranty expiration.
Toshiba - wonderful, except they burn out faster than a crackwhore on a 3 day binge. Add to that pathetic warranty service, and you have a first class loser. I never buy these anymore, and if I get a laptop with one, it's pulled immediately and eBayed.