Iomega Ditto Family of Tape Backup Drives Sets Industry Price/Performance Levels; Industry First 420 Megabyte Tape Drive for Under $100 Brings High-Capacity Backup to Consumer Market; Industry First 3.2 Gigabyte Travan Tape Drive

Business Wire, June 12, 1995

ROY, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 12, 1995--Iomega Corporation (NASDAQ:IOMG) today announced an entry level tape backup drive that delivers the industry's highest-capacity for under $100 and two other high-performance backup drives that deliver up to 3.2 gigabytes of storage for about ten cents per megabyte.

Iomega eclipsed its own industry-leading low pricing for reliable tape backup solutions by lowering the price of its Ditto 420, a small, powerful tape backup drive capable of backing up to 420 megabytes of information on a single QIC-Wide tape. Expected to sell at street prices as low as $99, the Ditto 420 is the lowest-priced tape backup in its class and makes tape a viable alternative for the home and small office/home office market.

Iomega also announced today two other new Ditto drives using new Travan technology that allow users to backup and restore over three gigabytes of information in a single, unattended session. These two new drives are the Ditto 800 Q an 800-megabyte tape drive expected to sell for less than $200, and the Ditto 3200 Q a 3.2-gigabyte tape drive expected to sell for less than $300. Both of the high-end drives are fully compatible with QIC, QIC-Wide, Travan and Irwin tape formats from Iomega and other vendors.

The entire Ditto family of tape drives provide users with one of the most reliable value-packed backup solutions available today. In addition to great pricing, each drive has a 5-year warranty, uses a beltless drive mechanism so there are no belts to stretch or break, and each drive comes with full-featured, easy-to-use backup software, not just light versions.

Travan and QIC-Wide are the emerging industry standard form factors for minicartridges which provide higher capacities on longer, wider tape. Both are evolutionary technologies based on earlier Quarter-Inch Cartridge (QIC) technology.

All three of the Ditto tape drives will be available as either internal units or as external parallel port units.

"Because of these new price points, capacities and performance increases, the Ditto product family becomes one of the most reliable backup solutions in the industry," said Timothy L. Hill, Iomega vice president of marketing. "At a street price of $99, we are making tape backup a simple and affordable option for consumers."

At the high-end of the product family the Ditto 3200 offers users the opportunity to backup data at less than ten cents per megabyte, making it an excellent backup solution for desktop computer users, networks and professionals in creative fields.

Each Ditto drive is compatible with today's leading operating systems, including DOS and Windows. They also are compatible with Novell and LANtastic network operating systems.

The new Ditto drives use 25 percent less power than other drives and are compliant will Federal Energy Star requirements.

Iomega also offers a line of Ditto accessories including Ditto Dash, an accelerator card that cuts backup time in half; the Ditto carrying case, a lightweight case for all external Ditto drives; Ditto tape cartridges; and a software upgrade to support OS/2.

The new Ditto drives will be available this month from major distributors and in consumer electronic and computer retail stores. They also are available in Federal integrator contracts and from GSA Schedule resellers.

Today's announcement coincides with Iomega's announcement of the Jaz drive, a one-gigabyte removable disk drive, and the company's recent announcement of an internal version of the Zip drive Q a 100-megabyte disk drive. The combination of the three announcements establishes Iomega as a significant new force in the computer storage market, offering a full range of products for virtually any desktop and mobile computing storage requirement.

All three product families will be shown at Iomega's booth (Booth No. 3852) at the PC Expo tradeshow in New York, June 20-22. -0-

Ditto Expected Street Pricing and Compatibility