Certance Announces SmartShield Technology Enabled DAT 72 Tape Drives for More Effective Media Restore and Data Recovery.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

COSTA MESA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 25, 2003

Combined with Certance's TapeShield(TM) Drive Reliability

Technology for DAT 72 and DDS Tape Drives, Small-to-Medium Businesses

Can Achieve Longer Drive and Media Life,

Greater Dependability, Lowest TCO 

Certance, the world leader in cost-effective data protection for companies of all sizes, today announced availability of SmartShield(TM) technology in its full line of DAT 72 tape drives and solutions. SmartShield technology, a Certance exclusive, significantly improves data recovery from DDS-4 and DAT 72 formatted tapes written "out of spec," even if they were initially written on tape drives from other companies. Concurrently, Certance announced that its TapeShield(TM) technology, which significantly decreases dust and debris, continues from its DDS-4 tape drives into its recently released DAT 72 drives.

Taken together, today's announcements reconfirm Certance's worldwide corporate commitment to providing reliable, cost-effective data protection solutions to the small-to-medium business community. A recent Certance survey of channel partners reported that more than 60 percent said their customers' number-one data protection challenge involved backup failures associated with "bad tape media."

SmartShield and TapeShield technologies are specifically designed to solve those challenges with significantly higher uptime, extended tape life and fewer data cartridge failures. The cumulative result is a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) with Certance DDS and DAT tape solutions.

"Dependability is the key component in any data protection strategy; the hardware and software must perform as promised when needed," said Dianne McAdam, senior analyst and partner for Data Mobility Group. "Companies like Certance have a responsibility in today's market to provide their customers with reliable solutions. By designing and offering innovative technology that helps them meet that responsibility, they are living up to the promise they make in selling their products, which can translate into true benefits to millions of users globally."

SmartShield: Restores difficult-to-read data

SmartShield technology is unique to Certance DAT 72 drives and provides users with a significant step forward. The technology improves the restore capability associated with any problematic tapes written out-of-spec or with a weak signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), even those initially written on non-Certance DDS-4 or DAT 72 tape drives. By utilizing an innovative, Certance-exclusive hardware implementation, SmartShield technology ensures the drive's ability to recover difficult-to-read data during a critical system restore, using a multiple-pass, cumulative read of fragmented data, rather than the single-pass method where such attempts oftentimes fail, resulting in a loss of business-critical data.

TapeShield: Alleviates drive-degradation and protects business-critical data in today's dusty environments

TapeShield technology incorporates three major advances in DDS drive reliability by providing a pristine environment inside the tape drive. It effectively creates a shield around the tape path, solving the issue of dust and debris-based drive degradation:

-- An environmentally sealed chamber for the head-to-tape

interface (HTI), increases reliability by decreasing airborne

contaminants;

-- A continuous-contact capstan cleaner cuts capstan

contamination; and

-- A sapphire media-cleaning blade automatically removes debris

from tape cartridges before they can contaminate the drive.

Recent benchmarking tests reveal that TapeShield technology-equipped tape drives from Certance ran more than 10 times longer under dust-laden conditions than other DDS and DAT tape drives that fail with "hard read" errors.

"A dusty environment can wreak havoc on tape drives," said Mike Lakowicz, Certance's vice president, product strategy and business development. "The vast majority of companies don't have the luxury of dust-free 'clean rooms'. Their tape drives are subject to day-in, day-out exposure to dust and dirt with expectations for continued flawless performance. TapeShield technology ensures that our customers achieve that level of certainty." Lakowicz noted that "SmartShield and TapeShield technologies help Certance achieve the market's highest reliability, consistent with the company's position as the world's unit-shipment leader of tape drives for data storage, retrieval and archiving."

Certance's DAT 72 tape drives with SmartShield and TapeShield technology are available through the company's worldwide network of channel partners and systems integrators, as well as through Certance's online store at http://shop.Certance.com.

About Certance

Certance is a worldwide market leader in tape backup products and data protection solutions, with more than 12 million drives installed. Headquartered in Costa Mesa, Certance provides a full array of data recovery solutions including LTO Ultrium, DDS/DAT and Travan technologies, designed to meet the backup, restore and archive needs of virtually every platform from notebooks and PCs to enterprise servers. A Seagate affiliate, Certance can be found around the globe and at www.certance.com.

Note to Editors: Certance and the Certance logo are trademarks of Certance LLC. Seagate and Seagate Technology are registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are owned by their respective owners. Certance reserves the right to change, without notice, product offerings or specifications.