While the ultimate fashion accessory of recent popular culture is flashy jewelry -- known by its street name "bling" -- Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is today saying high-capacity, miniature hard drives are the new "bling" for their ubiquity and desirability among the consumer digerati. Hitachi's latest "bling" are the industry's smallest one-inch and lightest 1.8-inch hard drive, introduced in concept earlier this year under the monikers Mikey and Slim.

The new drives feature an unmatched combination of CE-specific features, such as higher capacity on smaller footprints, easier integration with a ZIF connector, industry-first CE-ATA interface, significantly lower power consumption for longer device battery life and industry-leading shock protection through a number of technologies, including a new drop sensor.

Mikey -- Microdrive 3K8

Mikey, which is officially called the Hitachi Microdrive 3K8, will be available with 6 and 8 gigabytes(a) (GB) of storage capacity and, yet, is nearly 20-percent smaller and consumes 40 percent less power than its predecessor. The 3K8 is also the first hard drive to offer the CE-ATA interface, which is designed to support the specific relationship between small-form-factor hard drives and the handheld consumer electronic devices in which they are embedded.

In addition, Hitachi is deploying drop-sensor technology on the new Microdrive, which protects against data loss in the event of a drop. Acting like a sixth sense, Hitachi's ESP or Extra Sensory Protection technology works by immediately parking the read-write head safely away from the surface of the disk when it detects a fall, preventing head/disk contact which may cause data loss.

The 6- and 8-GB versions of the Microdrive 3K8 are now shipping in limited quantities, with volume shipment planned for October. Hitachi's ESP technology and support for the CE-ATA and ATA-on-MMC interfaces will be available starting in December.