High-capacity desktop drives have never been so affordable. Darien Graham-Smith puts 23 to the test to find the best

High capacity, good performance and affordable. The Caviar is a great alternative to the Samsung

The Caviar 'BB' series disks from Western Digital are designed to be good, solid mid-level drives with decent all-round performance.

The Caviar 'BB' series disks from Western Digital are designed to be good, solid mid-level drives with decent all-round performance.

The Caviar 'BB' series disks from Western Digital are designed to be good, solid mid-level drives with decent all-round performance.

A great desktop drive but you can get this capacity and similar performance for less

When it comes to choosing the right hard disk for you, there are several factors that you have to consider.

If your PC is lacking storage space then give it some extra room with these four internal hard disks.

Western Digitals new 8MBbuffer line of Caviar drives proved to be a tough act to match.

The Caviar WD2500JB is a big 250GB, and is one of three drives to breach the $500 mark. It is $80 cheaper than the WD2500JD SATA drive. Despite the three-year warranty, it’s not exactly great value; in fact, like the W2500JD, this drive carries a high gigabyte-per-dollar value.

Behemoth server and PC storage, with reliability features too.

While the storage community eagerly awaits Serial ATA disks (see page 39), the latest generations of Ultra ATA disks have emerged, boasting huge capacities and searing performance.

A decent performer, but it struggles with small files

Another drive to feature both SATA and Molex power connectors on the rear of the unit, this drive offers both backwards compatibility with suitable motherboards and future native SATA power supplies.

Narrowly edged out of the winning position by the extremely capable Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 drive, this drive has plenty to crow about.

The only IDE drive we received for testing, it's also the cheapest drive at $240 and works out to a reasonable $1.20 per gigabyte.

Western Digital markets this drive as a special edition drive for higher performance needs, but in our labs, not only has it been beaten by all other SATA drives, but its own IDE counterpart.

Not great value for money, but the XPS 700 offers plenty of power and striking looks.

How much capacity and how many drives do you need? We look at a selection of storage options

Dell OptiPlex GX150