Seagate yesterday not only pledged to ship a 12GB 1in hard disk drive in Q3, it also promised the drive would ship in a much smaller casing than its current 1in HDD line-up does and consume two-thirds of the power. What's more, the drive incorporates perpendicular recording technology, the company said.

Seagate's 14g ST1.3 is pitched at phones and media players. No wonder, then, it's got a sudden acceleration sensor to detect when the host device is dropped and park the read/write heads to protect the disk from damage. This increases operational shock resistance by up to 33 per cent, Seagate said, allowing the device to survive a 1.5m fall onto a hard concrete surface.

That said, gadget makers unwilling to pay for the security system can buy a version without it, so not all ST1.3-based devices will be created equal, it seems.

The drive unit measures 4 x 3 x 0.5cm, for a footprint that's 23 per cent smaller than Seagate's previous 1in drives, the 4.3 x 3.6 x 0.5cm ST1 series, which already stretches to 8GB. The new drives have an average seek time of 20ms.

Seagate said the two ST1.3 SKUs - one with the drop sensor, the other without - will ship in Q3. It didn't disclose pricing. ®

Seagate's ST1.3 (left) and the previous generation, the ST1