Digi-Data Leads RAID Controller Industry with Addition of Superior Fibre Channel Z-9500 and Z-9550 RAID Controllers.

JESSUP, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 22, 1998--Digi-Data Corp. announces the shipment of the Z-9500 Fibre Channel RAID 3 Controller and the Z-9550 Fibre Channel RAID 3&5 Controller, the fastest disk array controllers available on the market today.

The Z-9500 is the first RAID controller on the market to offer the 100 MB/sec Fibre Channel host connection and true RAID 3 architecture. Digi-Data's new Z-9550 Fibre Channel RAID 3&5 Controller includes hardware enhanced RAID 5 to support I/O intensive applications as well as large file applications.

"Compared to other controllers," stated Dr. Tomlinson Rauscher, Digi-Data president, "Digi-Data controllers use superior design features to achieve the highest performance on the market.

"With the introduction of the Z-9500and Z-9550, Digi-Data now delivers the fastest Ultra SCSI RAID controllers, the fastest Ultra2 SCSI RAID controllers, and the fastest Fibre Channel RAID controllers available on the market today. The units our customers have installed are proving that every day."

With its full line of high-performance controllers, performance-enhancing software, and graphical user interface, Digi-Data Corp. now meets the most demanding storage requirements.

Digi-Data Fibre Channel RAID Controllers:

The biggest news from Digi-Data Corp. is the delivery of its Z-9500 and Z-9550 Fibre Channel RAID Controllers.

The Digi-Data Z-9500 achieves more than 55 MB/sec sustained throughput (using only four data disks) for demanding functions such as editing two streams of uncompressed video, storage and retrieval of pictures and text for digital prepress and medical applications, and moving large files for Internet service applications.

With two or more tiers of disks and Digi-Data's unique SCATS(TM) performance enhancing software that stripes data across tiers, the Z-9500 sustains even higher data rates. The exclusive Digi-Data hardware design not only reads but also writes information to an array of disks at these same high, sustained data rates.

Digi-Data designed its Z-9550 Fibre Channel RAID 3&5 Controller to support the increasing use of disk arrays for intense I/O transaction processing required for critical file server, data base, and OLTP systems. The Z-9550 performs thousands of I/O operations per second, in addition to sustaining throughput over 55 MB/second for RAID 3 applications.

Performance/Features:

The Digi-Data Z-9500 and Z-9550 Controllers incorporate several advanced design features to achieve their industry-leading performance.

Both Fibre Channel Controllers incorporate six Wide Ultra SCSI disk channels, operating at 40 MB/second each; support parallel operation of disks at a fraction of the cost of Fibre Channel disk connections; use Duchesnian caching algorithms; and incorporate 60 nanosecond cache memory expandable to 256 MB for screaming performance.

Flexibility and Reliability:

Both the Z-9500 and the Z9550 Fibre Channel RAID Controllers provide superior scalability and reliability as well:

-- Cable lengths up to 33 meters (copper cable) and up to 500

meters (fiber optic cable) to support distributed network

environments

-- Cache memory expandable to 256 MB to support multiple host

processes without frequent cache flushes

-- Six disk channels can support up to 15 disks per channel, for

a total of 90 disks, to support the largest mass storage

applications

-- Uninterrupted operation with no performance degradation after

a disk fails

-- Full support of SCATS(TM), Digi-Data's performance enhancing

firmware option that can effectively double a controller's

performance by striping data across 10 or more disks for

each host I/O operation.

"The new Fibre Channel RAID controllers we demonstrated at Spring '98 COMDEX provide performance hungry customers with industry-leading throughput," said Rauscher.

"With this announcement, we have introduced eight new competitively-priced high-performance RAID controllers to the market in the last 12 months, demonstrating our desire to provide a full range of RAID controllers to satisfy a variety of customer requirements."

About Digi-Data Corp.:

Digi-Data Corp. is a privately owned manufacturer with headquarters at its 75-acre site in Jessup. Established in 1960, the company has been providing mass storage solutions to the market for over 35 years. Since establishing itself as a leader in disk array technology in 1992, Digi-Data has delivered thousands of RAID Controllers to customers worldwide.

CONTACT: Digi-Data Corp.

Tom Rauscher, President

Phone: [phone]

Fax: [phone]

URL: www.digidata.com