Watch Out, WD: Seagate Unveils Competing 5mm Hard Drive

This morning, Seagate announced its own entrant to the superthin hard drive market with the all new Seagate Laptop Ultrathin HDD. Like the Western Digital model from earlier this year, the SLUHDD (sorry, Seagate, for that acronym) manages to pack 500GB into a space just 5mm high. It also uses a single-platter solution; the company promises sustained transfers of around 100MB/s with a spindle speed of 5400RPM.

It is a bit heavier than its competitor, however, weighing in at 93.55g compared to Western Digital’s 74g. Seagate is offering OEMs a bit more choice, offering the new model in both 500GB (ST500LT033) and 320GB (ST320LT030) varieties. The 500GB drive offers support for self-encryption schemes.

Seagate announced the new drive with quotes full of industry support, letting the world know that it had secured partnerships with Dell, Lenovo, and ASUS.

If you’re looking to upgrade the storage in your Ultrabook, you might be out of luck, at least for now. While the new SLUHDD comes in at the same price as Western Digital – just shy of $90 – it seems that for the moment supply is being reserved for partners, resellers, and OEMs.