<br><blockquote><i>MILPITAS, Calif., September 13, 2004--Maxtor Corporation (NYSE: MXO), a worldwide leader in hard disk drives and consumer storage solutions, today announced that it is shipping its new Maxtor SATA Ultra16™ Hard Drive Kits. As the only retail hard drive featuring a 16MB buffer and offering best-in-class 7200RPM performance(1), Maxtor's new Ultra16 kits are perfect for consumers who want to upgrade their systems for an improved multimedia, computing and gaming experience.<br> The new Ultra16 Hard Drive Kits come with a high-performance Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive and offer capacities up to 300GB, allowing consumers to store 5,000 hours of their favorite MP3s, 230,000 digital photos (JPEG) or 144 high-definition video games(2). Maxtor's easy-to-install SATA Ultra16 Hard Drive Kit includes an installation guide with step-by-step instructions, a SATA cable and mounting screws. The kit also includes Maxtor's popular MaxBlastTM installation software, which partitions and formats the drive for use, and helps copy files from the old hard drive to the new Maxtor drive. In addition, the new Ultra16 drive offers a 150MB/sec interface speed and SATA II features including Native Command Queuing (NCQ) for more intelligent hard drive operation, and runs quietly with a fluid dynamic bearing motor<p>
"Customers continue to rely on Maxtor's innovative storage solutions. Our retail product line, including our award-winning Maxtor OneTouch™ external drive, has become the industry benchmark in desktop performance, reliability and backup," said Stacey Lund, executive director of Maxtor's Consumer Products Group. "We take pride in offering a desktop hard drive solution for everyone from extreme gamers to cost-conscious consumers." <p>
PC or Mac users who play intense games, edit digital videos, juggle multiple applications at once, or who have an older parallel ATA system are perfect candidates to upgrade their systems to SATA. To upgrade, customers simply install a Maxtor Ultra16 hard drive and a SATA controller card, or install the drive directly with any new motherboard that supports SATA. Compared to parallel ATA, new SATA-enabled PC systems, particularly with NCQ, will show improved performance while multithreading or running two streams of multimedia content at the same time. <p>
Maxtor 250GB and 300GB SATA Ultra16 Hard Drive Kits are available through major distribution and retail channels. Manufacturer's suggested retail prices are $239.95 and $279.95 respectively. Parallel ATA Ultra16 Hard Drive Kits will be available in Q4 2004. </i></blockquote><p>