TechReport takes a further look at the Western Digital's RE2 750GB hard drive. Here's an excerpt:

With the 750GB Caviar SE16 already offering arguably the most attractive blend of performance, noise levels, and power consumption of any desktop Serial ATA drive, Western Digital's latest RE2 couldn't start with a better foundation. Built upon that foundation is a drive that's been tweaked and massaged with enterprise environments in mind. Additions like RAFF and TLER will no doubt come in handy for those looking to deploy a stack of RE2s in RAID, and the drive's slight performance advantage over the SE16-particularly under heavy multi-user loads-more than makes up for the modest increase in noise levels.

Of course, the RE2's slightly higher noise levels probably won't make this drive a favorite among PC enthusiasts. Neither will its price; the RE2 current starts at $260 online while its desktop counterpart can be had for as little as $190. $70 is a lofty premium to scale considering just how close these drives are in terms of performance. An extra two years of warranty coverage surely isn't worth that much, either.

So the RE2 doesn't unseat the Caviar SE16 as the best 7,200-RPM Serial ATA hard drive for PC enthusiasts. Instead, it establishes a new high-water mark for enterprise-class 7,200-RPM SATA drives. In fact, unless the environment demands low access times or involves heavy multi-user loads, the RE2 may even be a better alternative than a 10K-RPM Raptor. The RE2 certainly has the edge in terms of capacity-an important consideration if you're trying to squeeze as much storage as possible into a given rack or enclosure. In many instances, the RE2 beats the Raptor on performance, too.