Labs

LaCie's latest 500GB external desktop hard disk has a blue neon activity light and glossy black enclosure. Unlike the other desktop disks in the group, this hard disk has only a USB Hi-Speed interface and not FireWire or eSATA.

The LaCie Hard Disk was generally slower than the other desktop drives on test. It wrote small files at 7.22MB/s - far behind Buffalo's DriveStation Combo, which costs just £2 more. It was much faster than the Buffalo drive overall in our large-file tests, however.

The bundled Sync utility can synchronise your Outlook emails and web browser bookmarks to the disk. The backup software is very basic, though, and not much better than using Windows Explorer to back up your data.

LaCie's 500GB Hard Disk is fair value at 19p per gigabyte, but the Buffalo drive's superior small-file performance and FireWire port make it a better buy for just 1p more per gigabyte.