Toshiba 400GB MK4058GSX

With impending financial doom and gloom on the horizon, everyone's looking for ways to save money, which means that some will want to upgrade their laptops rather than replace them. And at less than £90, this 400GB 2.5in hard disk would appear to be cost-effective. In testing, we saw random access times of 19.5ms, while sequential read speeds came in between 35MB/sec and 70MB/sec. It also boasts Toshiba's "silent seek" technology, which is supposed to keep things quiet. However, we're not convinced that hard disk noise is an issue for laptop users, and once you start looking at the alternatives this drive starts to look expensive. Other drives can be had at the same capacity for far less than this.

Author: Matthew Sparkes