CES Toshiba today said it has finally begun shipping its long-awaited 4GB, 3600rpm 0.85in micro hard disk drives. The company also pledged to boost the drives' capacity to 10GB courtesy of perpendicular recording techniques.

That said, consumer electronics companies looking to use the drives in their products will have to wait until 2007 to take delivery of such "high-capacity" 0.85in units, Toshiba admitted when it announced the products at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today.

This longer-term schedule may reflect the experience Toshiba has had getting the 4GB model out of the door. The product was to have shipped mid-2005 - or so the company said when it announced the product at CES in January 2005. Then, Toshiba was also touting 6GB and 8GB drives in 2006. There was no mention of these capacities today.

Separately, Toshiba has also begun shipping an 80GB 1.8in drive, a dual-platter product derived from the 40GB drive it launched in August 2005. Like the 40GB unit, the new MK8007GAH HDD uses perpendicular recording to boost the platter's data-storage density to 206Mb per square millimetre or 133Gb per square inch.

By comparison, the 10GB 0.85in drive will score a data density of 200Gb per square inch, Toshiba claimed. ®