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Overland Announces Support for Storage Networking Industry Association Technology Center Grand Opening

February 5, 2001

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 5, 2001--

             Overland Demonstrates Open Systems Solutions
              for Serverless Backup and Third Party Copy

Overland Data Inc. (Nasdaq:OVRL), a technology leader in automated tape backup products, today demonstrated its support for the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA's) Technology Center Grand Opening in Colorado Springs, Colo.

The 14,000+ square foot center, the largest independent storage networking complex in the world, will support the SNIA by providing testing laboratories as well as educational and training facilities. The center will also facilitate the gathering of work groups to progress the study, development and recommendation of storage standards to the appropriate standards bodies.

Overland demonstrated its automated tape libraries in serverless backup environments, and SANPiper, the company's Fibre-to-SCSI bridge, that enables SAN connectivity for Overland's SCSI bus-based tape libraries and autoloaders. Presentations were done in the Extended Copy theme section at the Technology Center, using major software packages connected to SANPiper as the "third party copy engine."

"This is an exciting opportunity to work with other industry leaders to create and demonstrate progress in Fibre Channel and SAN applications. We are supportive of SNIA's role in this arena and are confident our relationship will produce more open systems solutions," said Steve Richardson, vice president of marketing at Overland.

"With today's Grand Opening of the SNIA Technology Center, the SNIA membership has succeeded in building an environment that will, without a doubt, help to accelerate our mission -- the promotion and evolution of storage networking," said Larry Krantz, chairman of the SNIA. "The SNIA education, training and standards developments are ultimately the future of storage networking. We believe that the SNIA Technology Center is a giant step toward supplying vendors, providers, and more importantly, customers, with a centralized storage networking resource for years to come."

About The Technology Center

As a laboratory, the Technology Center embodies the SNIA vision by offering this new facility and providing members with the opportunity to profile enterprise storage systems, computing platforms -- including Fibre Channel and NAS infrastructures -- and products. With its grand opening today, the SNIA Technology Center will showcase the development and testing of advanced network storage technologies that require interoperability of multi-vendor storage products.

The SNIA is dedicated to ensuring that storage networks become a completed and trusted solution across the IT community, and fulfills this mission by bringing together vendors and IT staff from the storage industry to define product requirements. For more details on the SNIA Technology Center, visit the SNIA Web site at http://www.snia.org.

About the SNIA

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not-for-profit organization, made up of 150 companies and individuals spanning virtually the entire storage industry. SNIA members share a common goal: to set the pace of the industry by ensuring that storage networks become efficient, complete and trusted solutions across the IT community. To this end, the SNIA is uniquely committed to delivering standards, education and services that will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market. For information, contact the SNIA at 650/949-6720, or via e-mail at executivedirector@snia.org, or visit the SNIA Web site at http://www.snia.org.

About Overland

Overland Data Inc. (Nasdaq:OVRL) is a global supplier of innovative data storage and storage automation solutions for computer networks. The company's award-winning DLT LibraryXpress(TM) SmartScale Storage(R) architecture has set the standard for intelligent automated storage and scalability, and established Overland as a leader in the mid-range tape storage market.

Today, Overland is broadening its product line and technology offerings to address additional segments of the storage market, including the entry-level small-business market, as well as the higher-end enterprise environment. Overland's patented Variable Rate Randomizer (VR2(TM)) data encoding technology, capable of substantially increasing the capacity and throughput of linear tape formats, is being applied by the company to its entry-level tape drive offerings. It has also been licensed to Imation Corp., Seagate Technology, StorageTek and Tandberg Data.

Overland products, acclaimed for their quality and reliability, are sold worldwide through leading OEMs, including Compaq, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Groupe Bull, IBM and NCR commercial distributors, such as Bell Microproducts, Ingram Micro and Tech Data Corp., as well as storage integrators and value-added resellers.

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CONTACT: Overland Data Inc., San Diego
Steve Richardson, 858/571-5555
srichardson@overlanddata.com
Scott McClendon, 858/571-5555 (Investor Relations)
smcclendon@overlanddata.com
Vernon LoForti, 858/571-5555 (Investor Relations)
vloforti@overlanddata.com
World Wide Web: http://www.overlanddata.com
or
JPR Communications, Encino, Calif.
Judy Smith, 818/386-0403
judys@jprcom.com
World Wide Web: http://www.jprcom.com