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PalmOne's recently made a big splash with its new LifeDrive Mobile Manager (see our review) because of its ability to store a lot more information than traditional handhelds because of its 4 Gigabytes (GB) of storage. It is one of several new and upcoming phones and PDAs with hard disk drives instead of or complimenting traditional RAM memory.

Today, as part of an announcement introducing a number of other new products, Seagate unveiled the highest capacity 1-inch hard disk drive yet. At 8 GB, the new device is designed for use with all sorts of mobile devices; including handhelds and phones, as well as CompactFlash format memory cards.

This news comes only three months after the company released a 6 GB hard disk drive model.

Already shipping in limited quantities to some Seagate original equipment manufacturer customers, the 8 GB 1-inch drive can store 200 hours of music or about 4,000 songs, as well as unspecified amounts of video and digital photos.

The new drive features Seagate’s RunOn Technology to improve performance while in a high-vibration environment, such as jogging. As part of the company's ST1 Series, the drive supports low-power modes and a time-to-ready time of a mere 1.2 seconds.