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.

You might expect the VelociRaptor's 10K-RPM spindle speed to generate a lot of noise, but it's one of the quietest drives we've ever tested at idle. Noise levels do rise under load, however, where the VelociRaptor's aggressive seeking puts it in the middle of the pack. Even then, the VelociRaptor is several decibels quieter than its Raptor predecessors, although that may give you little comfort under Vista, which seems to seek constantly in an attempt to fill its caches.

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.

The VelociRaptor's 2.5" core has a lot less weight to spin than traditional 3.5" drives. That pays huge dividends in power consumption. We should note that unlike 2.5" mobile drives, which only draw power from the 5V line, the VelociRaptor pulls from both 5V and 12V rails.