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.

Hitachi anticipates these two hard drives will play key roles in the emergence of high-capacity smart phones, multi-function audio/video players and other handheld consumer devices. CE manufacturers across these segments have already designed Mikey and Slim into prototype consumer devices, the earliest of which are expected out this year.

ESP is activated during a drop of as little as four inches (10 cm) and effectively allows the operating-shock tolerance to mimic non-operating-shock tolerance, which in the 3K8 equates to 2000 Gs, the industry's highest shock rating for a one-inch hard drive.

ESP will be especially useful in emerging hard-drive-based smart phones, which may experience greater user handling and, potentially, a greater number of drops than other types of consumer devices (see Hitachi shock-related press release for details). Hitachi believes ESP technology should be as essential to hard-drive-based devices as airbags are to cars.