Hitachi and Seagate release 1-inch 6GB hard drive models

Seagate is shipping its new 1-inch 6GB (gigabytes) hard drive, part of the ST1 Series for handheld applications. The 6GB Seagate ST1 Series can hold up to 150 hours - or 3,000 songs - of high-quality music files (128 kbps), providing convenient storage capacity for small music players, PDAs and handheld entertainment devices. The ST1 Series was first introduced in June 2004, and has been used in the handheld music players and adopted by entertainment device makers including Creative, Olympus, Rio, Sanyo, and Virgin.

The ST1 Series is also available in 5GB and 2.5GB, featuring the RunOn Technology that ensures consistent music playback while in a high-motion environment, such as jogging - the drive actually senses and compensates for motion to stay on track. The drives also have a drop protection technology ca;;ed G-Force Protection that "senses" when the drive is in free fall.

Competitor Hitachi also announced its own 6GB 1-inch hard drive model Microdrive 3K6 (pictured). The manufacturer starts shipping this drive with a suggested retail price reduction of up to 60 percent: each drive will retail for US$299. The 4 GB version of the Microdrive 3K6 will be offered at $199, representing a 60-percent decrease.

The Microdrive 3K6 is available in removable Compact Flash Type II and embedded versions.

Recently Hitachi announced plans for a 20-percent smaller one-inch hard drive with 8-10 GB of capacity. The new drive, nicknamed "Mikey" the baby Microdrive, is expected later this year.