Features - Storage Innovations:

IOMEGA, BDT PRODUCTS ANNOUNCE PLANS TO DEVELOP RRD TECHNOLOGY

Iomega Corp, a global leader in data storage, and German manufacturer BDT GmbH & Co. K.G., a world leader in auto loader products, announced their intent to develop tape replacement autoloader products using Iomega's revolutionary new Removable Rigid Disk (RRD) technology.

The two companies envision a broad range of breakthrough autoloader products, from full height 5.25-inch single drive products with 280GB of native storage capacity to multi-drive 4U configurations with over 4 TB of native storage.

Iomega's RRD technology is expected to debut in March in USB 2.0 and ATAPI configurations, branded as the Iomega REV drive, with autoloader products expected to arrive in the second half of the year. External bus-powered FireWire and internal SCSI and SATA models are currently in the design stage for planned introduction in the second half of 2004. RRD-based products will deliver state-of-the-art backup for small and medium-sized businesses and enterprise workgroups with lower cost and better performance than traditional tape backup solutions.

Iomega will display working prototypes of the new Iomega REV drive and REV disks (35GB native capacity, 90GB compressed) in a variety of non-autoloader applications Nov. 17-19 during Comdex Las Vegas 2003, in its meeting space at the Venetian Hotel.

"The tape backup market is ripe for a replacement technology that can lower costs and revolutionize performance," said Werner Heid, president and CEO of Iomega. "BDT is a leader in the autoloader market, and we believe that they are in an ideal position to help make the RRD vision a reality with a new line of high-performance RRD-based autoloaders."

BDT currently supplies about 70 percent of the low-end autoloader market through its original equipment manufacturer relationships with leading computer companies, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Quantum and ADIC.

"BDT is very excited about Iomega's new RRD technology and the opportunity it provides to millions of end users, both large and small, to optimize their data management requirements," said Glenn Klein, president and CEO of BDT Products Inc, BDT's global sales arm located in Irvine, Calif. "With our combined technologies, we will be able to offer clients immediate random data access with online real-time throughput plus online removable storage capability. We will provide a range of storage capacities at entry-level prices. BDT is elated to be working with Iomega on this innovative and long-awaited data management solution."

RRD Technology

Iomega first announced its RRD technology in August, and plans to market Iomega-branded products under the Iomega REV trademark for disks and drives. Iomega-branded REV disks (35GB native capacity, 90GB compressed) are smaller than a deck of playing cards, more durable than tape and have a native maximum transfer rate of 22 MB per second. One disk holds over 35 billion bytes -- a remarkable accomplishment in such a small, portable device.

Based on average data rates, a 20GB file that takes more than an hour using DDS tape will take only about 20 minutes with RRD technology. And because RRD drives are random-access storage devices, they will allow users to copy or restore individual files in seconds, many times faster than is possible with tape.

Iomega RRD technology is also designed for superior reliability compared to tape. Iomega REV disks are rated for over one million rewrites versus a few thousand for tape. With an ultra-quiet fluid dynamic bearing motor, advanced two-stage error correction circuitry and automatic internal head cleaning, RRD technology is expected to deliver comparable data integrity compared to today's tape solutions.

Iomega REV Drive Price-Performance

The high-performance Iomega REV system incorporating RRD technology is expected to cost significantly less than many current tape drive alternatives, including DDS, DAT-72, VXA, AIT-1, DLT and DLT VS80. It is also designed to work with popular backup and disaster recovery software and will appear to the system as a regular drive letter.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of RRD technology will be its virtually unlimited storage expandability. With 35GB REV disks expected to retail for approximately $49, RRD technology will be ideal for data-intensive settings that must maintain large archives, markets like legal and financial services, medical imaging and medical records archiving, professional digital video production, video surveillance systems and high performance workstation applications such as graphic arts, software or gaming development.

Cost-effective Iomega REV disks will also give PC users a superior backup solution -- removable, expandable and versatile. Home and business users with an Iomega REV drive will be able to create an emergency "boot and restore" disk for their entire system, or store both operating system and data on the same disk to create a true "Boot and Run" computing environment for minimal downtime in the event of an internal hard drive failure.