Xyratex Becomes the First Subsystem Manufacturer to Qualify Seagate's Cheetah 15K.5, 4Gbit/sec, Fibre Channel Disc Drive

Business Wire, Sept 12, 2006

HAVANT, England -- Xyratex Ltd. (NASDAQ:XRTX), a leading provider of storage systems for OEMs and Solution Integrators, today announced that it is the first storage subsystem manufacturer to qualify the new Seagate 300GB Cheetah 15K.5, 4Gbit/sec, Fibre Channel (FC) disc drive.

Seagate's Cheetah 15K.5 disc drive has been fully integrated into Xyratex's RS-1600-F4-SBD 4Gb FC SBOD storage system and is also fully qualified in all Xyratex's legacy Fibre Channel RAID, SBOD and JBOD solutions.

"Xyratex and Seagate have maintained a very close working relationship and leadership position throughout the development of 4Gbit/sec storage technology. This partnership has resulted in several industry firsts including the qualification of Seagate's Cheetah 15K.4, predecessor to the Cheetah 15K.5 and the subsequent release of the Xyratex RS-1602-F4-SBD solution," said Todd Gresham, EVP, Xyratex Storage Systems. "Precipitated by close collaboration between the Xyratex and Seagate product teams and superb levels of Seagate support during the qualification process, this latest achievement underscores both companies' commitment to continual delivery of technology innovation."

The Seagate Cheetah 15K.5 disc drive is Seagate's first 4Gbit/sec disc drive to be based on perpendicular recording. This innovative technology dramatically enhances capacity and increases sequential performance by more than 30 percent. Like other drives in the Cheetah range, Seagate designed it to provide maximum reliability. This is achieved by utilising technologies such as enhanced Error Correction Code and Background Media Scan to ensure data integrity in the most demanding data environments.

"The use of perpendicular recording technology in the Cheetah 15K.5 disc drive provides storage manufacturers with an unprecedented combination of capacity, performance and reliability," said Harry Prestidge, Xyratex global account manager with Seagate. "In addition, Cheetah 15K.5 enables customers to meet performance requirements with fewer drives than 10K drives, which lowers total cost of ownership."

Fibre Channel remains the technology of choice for mission critical applications in the larger enterprise. Xyratex and Seagate continue to work together to provide industry leading technology enhancements that deliver the performance, data availability and reliability the enterprise demands.

About Seagate

Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard disc drives, providing products for a wide-range of Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, and Consumer Electronics applications. Seagate's business model leverages technology leadership and world-class manufacturing to deliver industry-leading innovation and quality to its global customers, and to be the low cost producer in all markets in which it participates. The company is committed to providing award-winning products, customer support and reliability to meet the world's growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at www.seagate.com.

Seagate, Seagate Technology and the Wave logo are registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC. Cheetah is either a trademark or a registered trademark of Seagate Technology LLC. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. One gigabyte, or GB, equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity. One terabyte, or TB, equals 1,000 gigabytes when referring to hard drive capacity. Accessible capacity may vary depending on operating environment and formatting. Quantitative usage examples for various applications are for illustrative purposes. Actual quantities will vary based on various factors, including file size, file format, features and application software.

About Xyratex

Xyratex is a leading provider of enterprise data storage subsystems and network technology. The company designs and manufactures enabling technology that provides OEM and disk drive manufacturer customers with data storage products to support high-performance storage and data communication networks. Xyratex has over 20 years of experience in research and development relating to disk drives, storage systems and high-speed communication protocols.

Founded in 1994 in an MBO from IBM, and with headquarters in the UK, Xyratex has an established global base with R&D and operational facilities in Europe, the United States and South East Asia.