Most all of these high speed IDE drives are on the noisy side, it's somewhat inherent to their speeds. But some drives, for which you will pay a lot more than Free or $20, are less noisy. I've always had good luck with Asus, Toshiba, and Teac drives, but you're gonna pay close to $50, or more, for one. At that point, you might as well spend an extra $15 and get a DVD-ROM instead.