Current Mac Mini Superdrive noise/vibrataion...Resolutions?

Question

I've got a Mac Mini that I purchased around September or October of last year, so it's the current generation that's in the Apple Store right now. When the drive spins up anywhere near full speed, whether reading or burning, the excessive noise and vibration makes it almost intolerable to stay in the room with it. It's definitely not "normal" by any stretch of the word. No disc burning has failed because of this, but it does seem to take excessive amounts of time to burn full discs. Also, this weekend I installed Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 on my 2008 Black Macbook and it took around an hour to complete the install. I did the same install from the same DVD on my current Mac Mini and after well over 2 hours of installing and only getting to about 60% progress, I gave up and went to bed while it finished. So same speed drive, close to the same processor, 4 times the RAM...and the Mac Mini takes at least 3 times as long to accomplish the same install. That's not acceptable at all. Granted, I don't use the drive all that often, but when I do I want it to work, and to work efficiently and properly.
I've searched the discussions and see threads from over a year ago on this topic, but nothing recent. Wondering what the latest verdict is on these issues and if Apple has been replacing these as of late and/or has acknowledged the problem. I'm still within the standard 1 year warranty, but also have Applecare, so warranty is not really an issue. I've only found a couple people for whom Apple has fixed this (and then they just replaced the whole machine), and those have all said that the noise was not quite as bad, but that it was still not normal in the replacement machines, and even then that was after 2-3 replacements. I don't want to go through the hassle of replacing my machine multiple times and having to keep restoring from Time Machine backups only to have a machine that isn't quite as noisy. The noise I could honestly deal with if I had to (but I shouldn't), it's the excessively long read/write times that I can't accept. So any new news on this before I go to the trouble to take it to the Apple Store?

Answer 1

Right, and that's what I would fully expect. However, I'm looking for people who have recently had the problem, have taken theirs in for repair (warranty or not) and if the issue was fully resolved or if it was still a problem, even if it wasn't quite as bad as before. If I'm still going to have the issue after a drive repair/replacement I don't want to waste my time taking it in and being without a machine for a few days. I want to know current experiences with the superdrives on the last gen Mac Mini.