Barracudas are large carnivorous fish, but despite Seagate's Barracuda series being the first hard disk series to breach the 750GB barrier, the 7200.10 series hasn't exactly devoured the competition. Like all current 500GB drives, the 7200.10 ST3500630AS splits its data across three platters, which are accessed by six heads. This means that the 7200.10 ST3500630AS has a maximum areal density of 114.4Gb/in2, lower than that of the 750GB model of the 7200.10 series, but higher than the T7K500 HDT725050VLA360. The platters spin at 7,200rpm, and data access is assisted by a 16MB buffer.

Thanks to its comparatively high areal density, the 7200.10 ST3500630AS achieved a respectable score of 1.52 in our Paint Shop Pro test but, like all 7200.10 drives in this Labs test, it was slow at loading Far Cry, taking 42 seconds. The 7200.10 ST3500630AS is relatively cheap, with each gigabyte costing 19p, but its disappointing performance means that it isn't worth considering.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

• OCZ Core Series 30GB - Hard disks / storage
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - Hard disks / storage
• Asus EAH4870 TOP - Graphics cards
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro - Sound cards
• Multiwinia - Games
• Zotac GeForce GTX 260² - Graphics cards
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 - Graphics cards