News Release

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 12, 2001--Overland Data Inc. (Nasdaq:OVRL) today announced that, after an extensive search, Christopher Calisi has been named its president and chief executive officer, succeeding Scott McClendon, who was named to the newly created position of chairman of the board.

The expansion of Overland's management team comes at a time when the company is experiencing significant growth, broadening its product and technology offerings, and entering new markets.

Calisi, age 41, brings to Overland strong technical and sales/marketing expertise, as well as a successful career in developing and executing corporate and product-level strategic plans at software companies.

At Overland, Calisi will be responsible for the definition and execution of the company's future strategic plans as well as day-to-day operations. McClendon, as chairman, will focus on growing and fostering the company's existing stakeholder relationships.

Calisi was most recently chief executive officer of eHelp Corp., which was transformed under his leadership from a small, desktop software maker to an acknowledged leader in the Internet development tools market.

Previously, Calisi held executive management positions with Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq:SYMC), concluding as vice president of the Communication Products division. Prior to Symantec, Calisi held marketing and software design positions with Unify Corp. and Computer Associates.

"Over the past 9 years," stated John A. Shane, an Overland board member, "Scott McClendon has provided Overland with outstanding leadership and has transformed the company from a small privately owned engineering-based firm into one of the country's finest publicly owned manufacturers of high quality, reliable tape storage systems. With Overland's current strength and momentum, the board of directors felt that this would be an opportune time to further broaden and deepen the company's management capabilities, thereby enabling the company to explore new markets for its products and to expand its scope of activities. We are pleased to announce the addition of Christopher Calisi to the Overland management team and believe the strong, complementary talents of Calisi as CEO and McClendon as chairman will greatly benefit Overland and its stakeholders in the years to come."

"Personally, I am genuinely excited to have the opportunity to work together with Christopher on building shareholder value at Overland at a time when the company is extending its reach into new product and market areas," stated McClendon. "Christopher will bring new vision and energy to the company, as well as the benefit of his marketing and management skills, technical capabilities and years of hands-on software development experience. We look forward to his contributions as Overland further defines and executes its strategy for maximizing shareholder value."

"It is an exciting opportunity to join Overland. The company is experiencing strong momentum in its core business, which will serve as a platform for new growth opportunities," stated Calisi. "Overland has a rich history in the business of managing mission-critical data. I believe significant opportunities will exist for the company to build on its foundations in data storage and automation. I look forward to working with the Overland management team and the board to take Overland to a new level."

About Overland

Overland Data Inc. 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.