As Maxtor has now been fully absorbed into the Seagate behemoth, there isn't much difference between the two brands. Indeed, the 250GB DiamondMax 21 is virtually the same drive as the 250GB Barracuda 7200.10. The major difference between the two is the DiamondMax 21's 8MB buffer as opposed to the 16MB in the Barracuda, although you can buy 250GB 7200.10 disks with the same 8MB buffer as the Maxtor.

The buffer can be the only explanation for the DiamondMax 21's dismal showing in our benchmarks. As is so often the case, the drive looks as if it should have some potential from the HD Tach 3 RW results. The average sustained reading performance was 86MB/sec, with writing at a decent 81.1MB/sec. Although the average access was a low 15.2ms, this doesn't explain the dire score in our Gimp image editing test. The disk's result of 959 was third slowest this month, although the DiamondMax 21 redeemed itself when loading the Relic level of Crysis, with a result that's only marginally slower than that of the Western Digital Caviar SE16.

Priced at £36.30, the Maxtor is the cheapest 250GB drive in this test, with each gigabyte costing just 16p. However, with Western Digital's Caviar SE16 costing just £3 more and a whole lot quicker, it makes little sense to buy the DiamondMax 21.

• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008
• Multi-GPU graphics - 20th June 2008
• CPU water cooling - 17th June 2008

• Creative Zen X-Fi with Wireless LAN 16GB - Peripherals
• DFI Lanparty DK P45-T2RS PLUS - Motherboards
• Hyundai W240D-PVA - TFT monitors
• Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA SSD - Hard disks / storage
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky - Games
• LanCool Metal-Boned K10 - Cases
• Asus Maximus II Formula - Motherboards