Merlocpm, I believe Quadra contains 2 physical 3.5 inch drives. Such arrangement will always yield a little more than twice the noise/vibration of a single drive. That is because it is unlikely that the two drives are perfectly aligned on the same rotational plane. In addition there may be microscopic rotational speed differences between the drives. . . all of this will cause. . . mechanical intermodulation, which will translate into a little additional noise and vibration. Try to place the quadra on top of a sheet of sorbithane. The lower mass of 2.5 inch drives is likely to yield less vibrations. The largest 2.5 inch drives on the general market today seem to be 500GB with 5400RPM rotational speed, with prices as low as $109 for the Hitachi offering. See:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380+1309740009&Configurator=&Subcategory=380&description=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=
The drives are sold unformatted and can be fitted into an external SATA 2.5 inch USB or Firewire enclosure for use on Mac, Windows, and LINUX variants. On Windows the only file system supported for large partitions is NTFS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380+1309740009&Configurator=&Subcategory=380&description=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=
The drives are sold unformatted and can be fitted into an external SATA 2.5 inch USB or Firewire enclosure for use on Mac, Windows, and LINUX variants. On Windows the only file system supported for large partitions is NTFS