I'm sure some of you guys already know that not all the DVD drives in the XBOX360's are the same. What you may not know is that there are some drives that actually run quieter than others, especially those that have optimized spindown times. I believe those drives to be from Samsung.

Mine spins the whole time at full speed while the game is running. As a result of that, my DVD gets a little toasty. I wonder when if one day the DVD might just melt.

Does anyone out there have a quiet XBOX360? Think I should change mine?

i doubt there's any performance superiority between samsung drives vs hitachi drives. do rmb the gpu heatsink is located very close to the dvd-drive, so a bit heaty is kinda expected.

which drive do you have ionStorm? Hitachi? Pioneer?

the samsung drives are anti-porn me thinks... doax2 has a higher probability of not working on them...

I don't know how to check, but mine's probably the Hitachi.

Probably no performance difference, but the Samsung has been reported to be quieter and cooler.

To identify your xbox360 dvd rom
http://pictures.xbox-scene.com/xbox360/dvd/TS-HLG.jpg

Looks like I got a Hitachi.

Hmm...I got one chance to change my XBOX though. I'm having this small niggle where if I leave it off for say...1 hour, when I turn it back on, it refuses to boot. I have to turn if off and back on again. Weird problem...but i'm not taking any chances.

Guess i'll have the chance to go peep at the drive before I choose my unit. Mwahaha...