Features - Storage Innovations:

ADAPTEC AND MAXTOR DELIVER ANOTHER SOLUTION

"External RAID controller-based storage, which accounted for about 50 percent of the total RAID-based storage market in 2000, is expected to soar to over 75 percent market share by 2005," according to Gartner Dataquest. During the same period, the channel's share of overall external RAID storage sales is expected to grow from 36 percent to at least 50 percent.

"The time is ripe for Adaptec and Maxtor to leverage a robust product and engineering relationship spanning three SCSI generations to bring the channel external storage products that are affordable, seamlessly interoperable and easy to use," said Tim Connolly, director of RAID marketing for Adaptec's Storage Solutions Group. "The qualification of the Maxtor drives underscores both companies' commitment to providing the channel with leading-edge enterprise storage solutions with strong customer support."

"The channel can rely on industry leaders and innovators like Maxtor and Adaptec to deliver the finest solutions available for centralized storage," said John Joseph, vice president of marketing for Maxtor's Server Products Group.

Adaptec's DuraStor external storage solutions include a 1U RAID appliance that holds up to two RAID controller cards, a 2U SCSI storage enclosure, and easyto -use storage management software. The subsystems can easily be scaled to 876 gigabytes by installing up to 12 one-inch drives in a single storage enclosure. The SCSI-to-SCSI DuraStor subsystem supports up to three enclosures to provide nearly 2.7 terabytes of centralized storage, while the Fibre Channel-to-SCSI product supports up to four enclosures to provide as much as 3.5 terabytes of networked storage. The full solution comes with Adaptec's free one-year on-site service and support plan as well as other upgradeable service options.

Maxtor is the first company to ship an Ultra320 SCSI hard drive, designed for storing and transferring enterprise-class data at burst speeds up to 320 megabytes per second. The Maxtor Atlas 10K III Ultra160 and Ultra320 SCSI disk drives are offered in capacities of 18-, 36-, and 73-gigabytes. The Atlas 10K III family features a 4.5 millisecond seek time and peak sustained data throughput of 55 megabytes per second that sets a new standard of performance for enterprise and workstation drives.

The addition of Maxtor to Adaptec's growing list of leading hard disk drive vendors is key to Adaptec's efforts to give end users and resellers more external storage solution choices in the channel. To help drive the growth of enterprise storage, Maxtor and Adaptec are planning a series of joint marketing activities to support qualified products in the channel as well as continued interoperability testing to advance enterprise storage solutions for their worldwide distribution partners.

"RAID Everywhere"

Adaptec's "RAID Everywhere" initiative is designed to accelerate the widespread adoption of RAID in the high-end PC, PC-server and external RAID storage markets in order to increase data protection and speeds of information exchange to support customers' business strategies. Key components of the plan include new product and technology developments, compatibility testing, and educational and support programs aimed at making RAID more affordable, accessible and easy-to-use.

About Maxtor

Maxtor Corporation is one of the world's leading suppliers of information storage solutions. The company has an expansive line of storage products for desktop computers, network storage, high-performance Intel-based servers and consumer electronics. Maxtor has a reputation of being a proven market leader by providing consistent high-quality products, service and support for its customers. To get more info on Maxtor call 800-2-MAXTOR or visit their Web site at www.maxtor.com

About Adaptec

Adaptec Inc provides highly available storage access solutions that reliably move, manage and protect critical data and digital content. Adaptec's storage solutions are found in high-performance networks, servers, workstations and desktops from the world's leading manufacturers, and are sold through OEMs and distribution channels to ISPs, enterprises, medium and small businesses and consumers. Adaptec is an S&P 600 SmallCap index member. More information is available at www.adaptec.com.