ROUND 2

Capacity

Spare a thought for the poor old conventional hard drive. In this brave new age of solid-state computing, the very notion of moving parts seems utterly antediluvian. But this is its chance to shine. When it comes to raw storage capacity, those spinning magnetic platters positively annihilate the solidstate alternatives.

Perhaps most impressive is the fact that, while CPU performance has somewhat stagnated, and the power of Moore’s Law to predict chip shrinkage may well have stalled, the ability of magnetic hard drive makers to pack in ever more capacity hasn’t waned at all. Innovations such as the use of helium to reduce internal air shear saw the 10TB barrier cracked last year in the consumer drive space, and that progress looks set to continue, albeit at quite a price.

Aim a little lower, and the likes of a 3TB drive are now available for as little as $75—and even less if you are willing to roll the dice on a refurb. The only caveat is that if you don’t have a big video or games library, you probably don’t need a big hard disk at all, and a much nippier budget SSD of around 500GB is probably all most mainstream users will ever actually need.

Winner: Magnetic hard drive