320gb 7200.10 seagate (made in China) was available at Rs 4,575/- in MG Road, Comp warehouse Bangalore (for those interested in B'lore). Now it's 4,760/-. Guess it's because the 300GB HDDs priced at 4,525/- (50 bucks less

) weren't selling. It should be cheaper in SP Road.
I'm also on the lookout for 2 drives around 5K offering the best price per GB. I've used Seagate drives since my first comp more than 12 yrs ago and samsung for nearly seven years. IMO, seagate drives always make noise. They have never been able to get their drive mechanics to stop making noise but maybe the new FDB motors have solved things. But I still don't want to buy seagate.
Samsung is quieter and offeres slightly lower performance maybe but I haven't felt it. Had a hitachi laptop drive on my previous dell laptop and that was whisper quiet too. Have a WD 80GB exernalized laptop drive WD800UE which is even more quiet than the Hitachi. I haven't heard it 3 inches away from my ear till date.
My new samsung 40 GB desktop drive 0411N is whisper quiet, has a 56 Mbps bandwidth and can duplicate copy a 700mb file in 20 secs.
IMO, for desktop drives, Hitachi and Samsung would be good for quietude and temperature, important esp. if you are going to externalize them with a casing. Seagate may be good for performance. Can't comment on reliability of anyone.
For laptop drives, WD and Hitachi seem to have gotten it right. Don't know about seagate in this area but then, most laptop drives are quiet.