Joining the ranks of Hitachi and Samsung, Fujitsu today announced its own 500GB, 2.5-inch hard disk drive for notebook computers, the MHZ2 BT. Slated to be available at the end of May, it sports a 3Gbps SATA interface and requires only 1.8W of power for read and write operations, ranking it among the most power-efficient drives in its class.

But unlike Hitachi and Samsung’s 5,400 rpm drives, the Fujitsu MHZ2 BT spins at a slower 4,200 rpm with 12ms average seek time and 14ms average write time. While this new hard drive won’t deliver the fastest data transfers, the large storage capacity certainly distances it to the still expensive SSDs, which are currently selling in the $700 - $800 range for 64GB.

Unfortunately, similar to the Hitachi 500GB offering, this one also has a three-platter design and a non-standard thickness of 12.5mm, so its availability doesn’t mean a drop-in upgrade will be possible for all laptop users.