Maxtor’s Broad Line of Enterprise Drives Power Promise’s Serial Attached SCSI JBOD System

Companies complete compatibility testing on SATA 3Gb/s RAID 6 controllers.

MILPITAS, Calif., March 7, 2006 – Maxtor Corporation (NYSE: MXO) and Promise Technology announced today that Maxtor® Atlas® Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and MaXLine® Serial ATA hard drives are qualified with the Promise VTrak J300s JBOD system, combining to provide customers with ultimate flexibility and choice for their application needs. The companies have also completed compatibility testing of the Promise SuperTrak EX8300 and EX8350 Serial ATA (SATA) 3 Gb/s RAID 6 controllers with the Maxtor MaXLine family of enterprise SATA hard drives, enabling system integrators and resellers to develop SATA-based storage systems for high-capacity, cost-effective storage for data protection and reference data applications.


The Promise VTrak J300s is a cost-effective, 2U-high JBOD storage system, supporting up to 12 3.5-inch form factor high-performance Maxtor Atlas SAS drives, high-capacity MaXLine SATA drives or a combination of both. With the Promise VTrak J300s customers can install Atlas 15K II drives for random I/O applications such as OLTP, ERP/CRM and video on demand, which require the fast performance. For capacity hungry applications such as disk-to-disk backup or reference storage, customers can install MaXLine Pro 500 drives into the Promise system for a capacity up to 6TB. Systems for applications requiring a balance of performance and capacity can be populated with the Atlas 10K V drives. The VTrak J300s system also can be populated with a combination of Atlas SAS and MaXLine SATA drives, enabling tiered storage in a box, while delivering flexibility, advanced data protection features, redundant components and high-speed bandwidth to help ensure maximum data storage reliability.


“Enterprise IT professionals demand powerful storage solutions for high-bandwidth and high I/O applications. Promise, in our leadership role in the development of standards-based building blocks, is working with Maxtor to create such solutions; Maxtor’s SAS and SATA drives teamed with our JBOD create powerful solutions for high-bandwidth and high-I/O applications,” said Suresh Panikar, vice president of WW channel sales and marketing at Promise Technology, Inc. “SAS technology is the key enabler, delivering flexible storage to meet a wide range of business needs.”


Promise controllers teamed with Maxtor SATA hard drives help developers create a high-capacity storage system with advanced RAID features for greater data protection and management.


“Maxtor and Promise continue to work closely together to test and qualify complementary products such as hard drives, host bus adapters and storage systems,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of enterprise products marketing at Maxtor. “This helps enable seamless support and interoperability with Maxtor’s broad line of enterprise hard drives, helping system developers bring their solutions to market in a timely manner.”


Maxtor’s family of enterprise hard drives includes the Atlas 15K and 10K RPM SAS drives with capacities up to 300GB and the MaXLine 7,200 RPM enterprise SATA drives with capacities up to 500GB. Maxtor Atlas SAS and MaXLine SATA drives are currently shipping and available at Maxtor distributors worldwide.


Promise’s external storage systems and SATA RAID controllers are currently available through the worldwide Promise distribution network.


About Maxtor Corporation


Maxtor Corporation (www.maxtor.com) is one of the world’s leading suppliers of information storage solutions. The company has an expansive line of storage products for desktop computers, near-line storage, high-performance Intel-based servers and consumer electronics. Maxtor has a reputation as a proven market leader built by consistently providing high-quality products, and service and support for its customers. Maxtor and its products can be found at www.maxtor.com or by calling toll-free (800) 2-MAXTOR. Maxtor is traded on the NYSE under the MXO symbol.


About Promise Technology, Inc.

Promise Technology is the originator of ATA RAID and worldwide leader in SATA RAID with over 14 million controllers shipped. Using Serial ATA and SCSI (SAS) technology to design and manufacture fast, reliable cost-effective data protection, Promise is the preferred choice for SATA host bus adapters, RAID controllers and SAS/SATA external storage systems. Promise Technology maintains ongoing product development relationships with leading storage and server manufacturers. Headquartered in Milpitas, CA, the company is ISO-9001:2000 and ISO-14001:2004 certified and has offices and operations throughout Asia and Europe to support local business partners and customers. For more information, visit http://www.promise.com.


Note: For purposes of measuring disk drive storage capacity, one gigabyte (GB) represents one billion bytes and one terabyte (TB) represents one trillion bytes.


Maxtor, the Maxtor stylized logo, Atlas and MaXLine are registered trademarks of Maxtor Corporation. All other brand, company and/or product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.


This announcement relating to Maxtor may contain forward-looking statements concerning the distribution and sale of Maxtor products and Maxtor’s execution. These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties which could materially affect the company’s results, including, but not limited to, market demand for hard disk drives and market acceptance of the transition from the parallel SCSI standard to the serial SCSI standard, the successful execution of volume manufacturing, distribution and sales development programs, the development and implementation of new technologies and the compatibility of the company’s implementation of technology standards with products offered by others implementing the same standard , the company’s ability to execute future production ramps and utilize manufacturing assets efficiently, pricing, competition, and the significant uncertainty of market acceptance of new products. These and other risk factors are contained in documents that the company files with the SEC, including the Form 10K for fiscal 2005 and its recent 10-Qs. Maxtor is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any responsibility to update or alter, its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contact Information

Alan Bernheimer

Maxtor Public Relations

Maxtor Corporation

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