Noise levels
Noise levels were measured with an Extech 407727 Digital Sound Level meter 1" from the side of the drives at idle and under an HD Tach seek load. Drives were run with the PCB facing up.

Without moving parts, the SATA25 is utterly silent. The noise levels you see here for it and the IDE Flash refer to the noise level of the system as a whole, effectively minus any noise created by a hard drive.

Power consumption
For our power consumption tests, we measured the voltage drop across a 0.1-ohm resistor placed in line with the 5V and 12V lines connected to each drive. Through the magic of Ohm's Law, we were able to calculate the power draw from each voltage rail and add them together for the total power draw of the drive.

In a rare moment, the IDE Flash tops the podium, drawing less juice than any other drive. The SATA25 understandably draws more power here; it's packing 16 times the storage capacity of the IDE Flash, and that's a lot more memory to power.

Likely as a result of its extremely high capacity, the SATA25 doesn't make as compelling a case for lower power consumption as one might expect. At least at idle, our 7,200-RPM mobile drives barely consume more power. However, those drives more than double their wattage under a seek load while the SATA25 barely moves the needle.