Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc. has started shipping a higher-capacity version of its Microdrive 1-in. hard disk drive and has made improvements to its 1.8-in. Travelstar drives, the company said Friday.

The drives are commonly used in portable consumer electronics devices such as digital music players. Products featuring the drives with increased capacity could be available before the end of the year, San Jose-based Hitachi said.

The company's current highest-capacity Microdrive is a 6GB model, and the new drives will be available in capacities of 6GB and 8GB. In the case of the 8GB drive, the extra space is enough for about 500 more average-size MP3 songs. In addition to the capacity boost offered by one of the new drives, they have several improvements over existing models: Size has been reduced by around 20%, and power consumption has been cut by 40%, the company said.