Not so long ago, a drive of this capacity - 250GB - would have been deemed an enterprise drive, used only in servers, network storage devices and similar systems. Not so now, with the advent of PVRs (Personal Video Recorders), DIY video editing, vast collections of MP3 files and so on.

The need to transfer these large volumes of data has seen the need for high capacity drives in desktop PCs explode, so much so that drives such as the Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 are quickly becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Perhaps better known for its notebook drives, Hitachi has had a line of desktop hard drives for quite some time, but with its acquisition of IBM's hard drive division (with IBM retaining a 30 percent interest), it has become a major player in the desktop market.

The Deskstar 7K250 series, the first range to be announced under the new Hitachi name, covers both Parallel ATA/100 and Serial ATA drives, with the parallel drives currently ranging in size from 40GB all the way up to 250GB. The Serial ATA drives start at 80GB and finish at 250GB and it's this largest drive, with a memorable model number of HDS722525VLS80, that we've reviewed.

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As with all other Serial ATA drives, with the exception of Seagate's Barracuda SATA line, the Deskstar 7K250 isn't a native SATA drive but instead relies on a parallel-to-serial bridge. It also has both the normal 4-pin Molex power connector and the new 15-pin power connector that supports hot swapping. Either one can be used to power the drive.

Based on three 83GB platters (discs), the drive has an 8MB buffer/cache, a spin speed of 7,200rpm and a claimed average seek time of 8.5ms, although under test the drive managed nearer 7.8ms. The drive's transfer rate peaks at around 60Mb/sec, as do most 80GB per platter drives, and falls to around 33MB/sec for sustained transfers.

Despite its high seek rate, the drive is quiet, thanks mainly to its fluid dynamic bearing motor. You may have read on some forums that such drives sometimes make odd, 'cat-like' noises, but under testing the drive remained quiet. As a consequence of being fast it does get a bit warmer than standard 7,200rpm drives, so it should be mounted in a case with decent airflow and cooling.

As with all Hitach's 8MB buffered drives, this one comes with a three year warranty.

After a quiet period while the acquisition took place, Hitachi's disk division is back, with a seriously fast, large capacity hard disk that proves that a decent drive can still be built on the older 7,200rpm format.