Maxell Broadens Product Line to Include IBM Format 3590 Extended Tape Cartridges.

FAIR LAWN, N.J. -- Maxell Corporation of America, the technology and marketing leader in advanced recordable media products, today announced it will expand its tape offerings to include the IBM format compatible 3590 Extended tape cartridge along with its existing broad line of computer tapes.

With a native capacity of up to 60GB (180GB with 3:1 compression) and a native transfer rate up to 14 MB/s, this tape format addresses both the reliability and rapidly growing storage capacity requirements of today's data center and automation customers.

"Maxell is very pleased to be welcomed into the IBM technology family," said Steven Pofcher, Senior Marketing Manager at Maxell. "The 3590 format has stood the test of time, and storage managers continue to rely on its performance, flexibility and reliability. Our new Maxell 3590E will be held to the same product quality standards that have established Maxell as a market and technology leader."

The new Maxell 3590 Extended tape cartridge incorporates a series of strong technological advancements:

--Maxell's proprietary ultra-fine ceramic armor metal particle with high coercivity and superior remanence for long-term magnetic stability. Maxell's ceramic armor technology coats the metal particle with a thin ceramic layer to protect from corrosion and provide increased durability.

--A super smooth, high-rigidity PEN base film to support a smooth magnetic surface for low noise level in high-density data recording. Maxell's PEN base film delivers a high rigidity and dimensional stability during drive operation for more accurate recording and improved archival storage.

--Maxell's proprietary tape back coating layer is specifically optimized for the tape transportation mechanism of IBM 3590 series drives.

--A high-performance binder system uses Maxell's proprietary cross-linking structure for a strong connection between metal particles producing superior durability.

--An advanced calender technology producing an extremely smooth, ultra-thin, sub-micron magnetic layer, creating stable high output for enhanced signal writing and reading.

--A new cartridge designed for more robustness and increased data protection. The top and bottom shells are fastened with screws for higher rigidity and a stronger, more secure cartridge.

IBM and IBM-compatible 3590E tape devices have found favor among enterprise customers for their very high performance, tape sharing capability, and native support for Ultra SCSI, Fibre Channel, ESCON and FICON environments. 3590E tape drive technology includes advanced Error Correction Code (ECC), servo track mechanisms, resident diagnostics, redundant parity checking, and read-after-write verification for extremely high reliability.

About Maxell

A technology and marketing leader in advanced recordable media products since 1969, Maxell Corporation of America is a full-line manufacturer of digital and analog media products for the data storage, consumer and broadcast markets. Maxell's data storage group provides one of the industry's broadest lines of premium digital recording media, including DLTtape, Super DLTtape, LTO Ultrium and DDS data cartridges, and is a full line supplier of recordable DVD media, including DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-RAM, as well as CD-R/RW media. All Maxell data storage products are backed by a lifetime limited warranty and 24-hour toll-free technical support. Additional information on Maxell can be found on the company's web site: http://www.maxell-data.com.

IBM is a trademark of IBM Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. LTO and Ultrium are trademarks of HP, IBM and Certance LLC in the US, other countries or both. DLTtape and Super DLTtape are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quantum Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks in this document are the properties of their respective owners.