Verdict: Try fishing elsewhere

In our last hard disk Labs test, the 200GB version of Seagate's Barracuda 7200.8 managed to steal the top prize, due primarily to its early adoption of 100GB platters.

Seagate was clearly hoping that the same strategy would work with the 250GB Barracuda 7200.8, which increases density to 133GB per platter. However, although the drive supports NCQ, it only has a S-ATA interface, not S-ATA II.

Although you could hardly call the Barracuda 7200.8 250GB slow, it doesn't excel either. Its Paint Shop Pro score was the slowest, unless you count the Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 running in S-ATA mode, although its Far Cry level loading time was one of the faster results. The reasons for its average showing were evident from the HD Tach 3 RW results. Although the sustained read rate was the third fastest, and its write performance was pretty good too, its average access time was one of the slowest. With so much disk activity relying on fast access, this holds back the Barracuda 7200.8 250GB's real-world performance.

Of the 250GB drives this month, the Barracuda 7200.8 250GB is the most expensive, which is significant when the competition includes the excellent Hitachi and Samsung drives. As such, we really can't recommend it.

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• 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

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