I agree, Benq 1640 Cheesecake!! Not only is my drive one of the quietest I have ever owned, but it also one of the fastest!
Meh, I've had 2 slot loading Pioneer DVD-ROMs in my old P3 rig... both lasted about 6 months before they died.
Dunno really, that was in the days when I didn't know half as much about PCs. Both failed with a "clicky" problem, you put in a disk, it sped up, big click and then stopped. Then it tries again. Still reads disks eventually, just veeery slow.