Labs

Toshiba doesn't make a big noise about its external hard disks, so you'd be forgiven for overlooking them when shopping for a new drive. But if you know where to look, you can get the unassumingly named 250GB Mini Hard Drive for just £80, making it hands down the best value of any of this month's drives.

The unit itself is as inconspicuous as the marketing. It's a tiny, brushed aluminium box that oozes portability. It's narrower but slightly wider than the Maxtor, giving it a similar desktop footprint

ADVERTISEMENT

overall. At 160g, it's lighter, too - only by 7g, but every little helps. For a 250GB device, it's ridiculously portable.

It must be admitted, though, that it's rather plain. Its only bit of flair is the big round light on the front, which normally glows blue when the drive has power, but flashes red to indicate disk activity. We found the effect quite mesmerising, although the bulbous design gave us an uneasy feeling of being watched.

At the back, there's a standard mini-USB socket and a DC power input, although the drive is perfectly happy drawing power over USB. The drive comes with the expected mini-to-dual USB cable, so it can suck the juice out of two host ports at once, but you shouldn't need to use the second plug unless your PC doesn't power its USB ports properly.

In our performance tests, the Toshiba achieved unremarkable results - it's not slow, but it's no faster than anything else. No-one could blame you for choosing a snappier, snazzier drive. But the Toshiba Mini Hard Drive delivers big storage in a tiny package, and for sheer value nothing else here comes close.