Boulder, CO - July 12, 1999 - Ecrix Corporation today announced a major automation partnership with Qualstar, a leading manufacturer of automated tape drive libraries supporting popular tape formats. According to the new agreement, Qualstar will offer Ecrix's breakthrough VXA-1™ tape drive with the popular TLS-4000 family of tape libraries, providing an exciting new data backup and restore option for customers.

Based on Ecrix's groundbreaking VXA technology, the VXA-1 tape drive delivers major advances over conventional tape technology, offering users unprecedented data restore capabilities. With 66GB of capacity and 6 MB/second transfer rate, the VXA-1 tape drive is the price/performance leader in its market.

"Qualstar is pleased to integrate the Ecrix VXA-1 tape drive into our product line," said Bob Covey, vice president of marketing, Qualstar. "Ecrix's Variable Speed Operation technology, which eliminates backhitching problems associated with streaming tape drives, has the added benefit of dramatically reducing power consumption and heat dissipation in automated libraries. Since the Ecrix drive does not need to backhitch the tape, it consumes a fraction of the power of a normal DLT drive. The drives also generates less heat, which helps increase the reliability of the entire library."

"The combination of Ecrix's tape drives and Qualstar's automated libraries will deliver a powerful value proposition for the customers of both companies," said Mike Saunders, Ecrix's vice president of marketing. "For the first time ever, Ecrix customers can get automated libraries with enterprise-level storage capacities, while Qualstar customers now have access to the industry's most innovative and effective data restore technology."

The VXA Advantage

VXA represents a new category in the tape storage market, emphasizing the ability to restore data. VXA eliminates the constraints of conventional streaming tape drives, which have traditionally struggled with data restore, and it avoids many of the costs associated with the designs of competing products.

VXA technology is based on three complementary innovations: Discrete Packet Format™ (DPF), Variable Speed Operation™ (VSO), and OverScan Operation™ (OSO). DPF enables data to be written and read in individually addressed packets, a technology similar to that already proven in the networking and Internet markets. VSO saves time by continually adjusting tape speed to match the varying data throughput of the server, eliminating a common streaming tape problem known as "backhitching." OSO is a technique for reading data packets independent of track shape or geometry. By overscanning data packets at variable tape speeds, VXA virtually guarantees data restore.

VXA-1 Tape Drive and Media

The VXA-1 features a storage capacity of 66 GB and transfers data at 6 MB/second*. Data integrity is achieved by a full Read-After-Write check and a dual-level four-dimension Reed-Solomon error correction system. An integrated ALDC™ chip provides hardware data compression. The drive can be attached to a wide range of desktop computers, workstations, and network file servers via its SCSI-2 interface. VXAtape cartridges are available in two capacities; the V17 stores 66 GB and the V6 stores 24 GB*.

Qualstar TLS-4000 Tape Libraries

Offering capacities from 400 GB to over 5 TB, the TLS-4000 tape library family economically and reliably automates tape handling and tape-based applications, whether backing up a single server, or as an integral part of an enterprise-wide storage management solution.

The TLS-4000 family can house from 10 to 120 tapes, so several backup cycles are available to restore any file at any time. Systems can function around the clock with no operator intervention required. Housing up to six tape drives, TLS-4000 readily supports concurrent reading and writing operations required to meet the throughput needs of today's growing servers and networks.

Product Availability

Qualstar will begin offering VXA-1 tape drives on TLS-4000 Tape Libraries in the third quarter of 1999 through value-added resellers (VARs) and system integrators. Additional information and practical advice about VXA drives and technology is available at www.vxatape.com.

About Qualstar

Founded in 1993, Qualstar is a leading manufacturer of automated tape libraries supporting popular tape formats. Its products are sold worldwide to OEM manufacturers, system integrators, and resellers who share Qualstar's commitment to quality. Visit www.qualstar.com, or call 1-800-468-0680 for complete company, product and application information.

About Ecrix

Ecrix Corporation is an innovator in tape storage and the developer of VXA, a breakthrough tape technology that features advanced backup and restore capabilities in products that deliver market leading price/performance and reliability. Ecrix is privately held and is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about Ecrix, please visit the company's web site at www.ecrix.com or telephone 303.402.9262. More detailed information about VXA technology is available at www.vxatape.com.

VXA, Discrete Packet Format, Variable Speed Operation, and OverScan Operation are trademarks of Ecrix Corporation. All other trademarks, trade names, registered trademarks, or registered trade names are property of their respective holders.

* Specifications assume a 2:1 ALDC hardware data compression

# # #