Earlier today, Seagate announced its 12GB 1-inch hard drive, the ST1.3.  The miniature drive is one of the first commercially announced drives to use perpendicular recording, and only the second drive to be manufactured of this form factor.  Furthermore, the ST1.3 uses slightly more efficient power management than the ST1, giving an additional 30% decrease in overall power draw.

The ST1, announced earlier this year, was an 8GB version of the ST1.3 designed specifically to replace CompactFlash cards.  Seagate expects the ST1 and the ST1.3 to replace NAND based media in cameras and phones. 

Seagate's ST1.3 will ship to manufacturers with or without a drop sensor.  With the drop sensor, the drive heads will seize up to survive a 2000G shock -- this is the equivalent of dropping the drive 1.5 meters onto concrete.  The NAND media that Seagate expects to dethrone can withstand physical impacts in excess of 10000Gs, but they also do not contain any moving parts.

Unfortunately, as exciting as the ST1.3 is, Seagate estimates that they will not start shipping drives to manufacturers until Q3'06. The price of the drive was not disclosed.