The Deskstar P7K500 is Hitachi's new energy-saving range of hard disks. The 250GB version draws just 3.5W when idle, making it the most environmentally friendly model in the range. However, the P7K500 also debuts Hitachi's ability to pack 250GB onto a single platter, which helps to explain its low power usage.

Unfortunately, hard disk speed isn't only determined by areal density, even if greater areal density is usually a recipe for benchmark success. In HD Tach 3 RW, the P7K500 managed a reasonable 77.4MB/sec average sustained reading rate, and 74.4MB/sec when writing. However, its average access time was a very slow 18.2ms, which held back the drive in our real-world performance tests. It was among the bottom third in the Gimp image editing benchmark, and the second slowest 250GB drive at loading Crysis.

Costing £45.71, the P7K500 is also the most expensive 250GB drive - this price works out as 20p per gigabyte. The Deskstar P7K500 has fairly low power consumption, but it's low on performance and not great value either.

Hitachi Deskstar P7K500 250GB / IDE133 / 7200rpm

IDE, 250 GB, 7200 rpm, 3.5"

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