The Seagate 6GB ST1 micro drive has now been officially released. I guess they were saving the announcement for Apple to dazzle us first with the new 6GB iPod Mini. Seagate has been shipping the 1-inch hard drive to Apple since around December of last year, manufacturers like Creative, Olympus, Rio, Sanyo and Virgin are next in line so we should expect something from them shortly.

The 6GB Seagate ST1 Series can hold up to 150 hours (roughly 3,000 songs @ 128kbps) of high-quality music files or whatever other data you desire, especially if used in PDAs, smartphones and handheld entertainment devices (do I smell an Apple PVP ?). It will also come in capacities of 5GB and 2.5GB, but who really cares now that we’ve had a taste of the 6GB.

What makes this ST1 so special? Well, compared to other 1-inch hard drives, the Seagate has RunOn technology; this will allow the drive to compensate for vibrations and harmonic distorion caused by running, jumping or other physical activities. This alone won’t be protect from impacts as Flash Memory devices do, but with the addition of G-Force protection, Houston we have contact.

G-Force protection is precisely what it sounds like it should be, tough, durable and ready to take a drop. The ST1 uses a special design that prevents the drive heads from moving off the platter when the power is off.