Although a few manufacturers have cheekily clubbed together several smaller drives in RAID 0, stuck them in a box and called the end product a 750GB drive, the 7200.10 ST3750640AS is the only true 750GB hard disk drive currently in production.

In order to squeeze this much storage into a standard 3.5in hard disk, Seagate developed new platters for the 7200.10 ST3750640AS. The end result is one of the first drives in the world to make use of perpendicular recording. This means that the magnetic grains are aligned at a right angle to the surface of the platter; as a result, more grains can fit into the same amount of physical space than is possible on a traditional platter, where the grains are longitudinally aligned. Thanks to perpendicular recording, each of the platters in the 7200.10 ST3750640AS stores an enormous 187.5GB, which is nearly 13 per cent more than that of any Hitachi, Samsung or Western Digital drive. In terms of areal density, this means that the 7200.10 ST3750640AS weighs in at 128.2Gb/in2, and needs just four platters and eight heads; consequently, it avoids many of the heat and noise problems that afflict five-platter/ten-head drives, such as the older Hitachi 7K500.

With such a high areal density, and a 16MB buffer and 7,200rpm motor, we expected the 7200.10 ST3750640AS to speed through every benchmark. However, in reality, the 7200.10 ST3750640AS isn't very fast at all, with a Paint Shop Pro score of just 1.50, and a lengthy 43-second level-load time in Far Cry. A close examination of the HD Tach 3 RW results revealed that, while the 7200.10 ST3750640AS is fast at writing data, it's slow at reading data.

As with any high-capacity drive, the 7200.10 ST3750640AS commands a significant price premium, and each gigabyte will set you back 22p. That said, it's amazing to think that this 750GB drive is only £16 more expensive than a 150GB Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD.

Although the 7200.10 ST3750640AS is the largest hard disk available, and isn't disastrously slow, it may have already met its Waterloo. This is because, in just one month's time, Hitachi will launch its 7K1000 series, which will not only include a 750GB model and a massive 1TB models, but will also debut the world's first 200GB platters.

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