We find them to be very, very quiet. Where did you get them? You might want to contact that company. Generally, if you send them in to Seagate, they'll just replace them with non-DB35 drives.

I am thinking they are just bad drives. I will try to get them replaced and see how it goes. I got them from digitalhotbuy.com as an oem purchase.

Thanks Michael

Acoustic settings

I'm not real familair with the DB35s, but most drives have a setting for acoustic modes. Is it possible the drives you got do not have acoustic management enabled?

Seagates really don't have a way to change the acoustic settings.

I just swapped out my factory Series3 drive (a WD) for a DB35 and subjectively the drive is very slightly louder. The old drive had some audible seek noise but the new one has a bit more as well as more spin noise. Not objectionable at all, but noticeable.

Any word back on those other drives, imaki?

jbs, what happened with your situation? I have the exact same situation. I swapped my factory Series3 drive with a Seagate DB35 250GB from WeaKnees, and find it to be very slightly louder. Exactly my experience. I spoke to Jeff today of WeaKnees, and I ended up purchasing a new DB35, and Jeff emailed me a shipping label, so the swap won't cost me anything. I was told by WeaKnees sales before I made the purchase that the DB35 would be 75% quieter, in his opinion, than the factory S3 Western Digital 250GB drive. I really hope the DB35 drive I have now is defective, as, if the second DB35 is the produces the same amount of noise as the one I now have, well, I'm not quite sure what that concludes!! But I'd like to hear of your experience, how it turned out?