Too much hard drive space is never enough. Operating systems and applications seem to double their hard drive footprints on a yearly basis, while even some reference CD-ROMs and games can dump several hundred megabytes of data onto your hard drive.

And then there's the Internet effect. Unless you actively delete them, every e-mail you've ever sent or received is likely to be stored somewhere on your PC, along with 'humorous' attachments, downloads from Web pages, shareware files, utilities that seemed like a good idea at the time and doubtless more than a few image files. These all eat up hard drive space, and because of the way Windows is designed, half the time you'll never know where many of these files are stored, and what they do. Add to this a collection of MP3 files and digital camera pictures or scanned images, and you have a recipe for hard drive overload.

So we've reviewed a few 'entry-level' 3.5-inch desktop EIDE hard drives, to find out what's available. We reckon 20-30GB is a good starting point for any new machine, or for upgraders looking to increase their storage space for the minimum of expenditure. Click the 'NEXT' link below to find out more.