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Overland Licenses VR2 Technology to Quantum

December 13, 2001
SAN DIEGO, Dec 13, 2001 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Overland Data Inc. (Nasdaq:OVRL), the market leader in mid-range tape automation solutions, today announced that Quantum Corp. (NYSE:DSS), a leading provider of data protection and network storage, has signed an agreement to license Overland's patented Variable Rate Randomizer (VR2(TM)) technology.

Overland's VR2 technology will be integrated into future Quantum tape drive offerings.

Today, the installed base of Quantum DLTtape drives is more than 1.7 million. Additionally, tens of thousands of the new Super DLTtape drives have been shipped to date. The first of the next generation of Super DLTtape drives is the SDLT 220 drive which operates at a native capacity of 110 GB and a native transfer rate of 11MB/second. Quantum's published technology development roadmap takes Super DLTtape technology to a native capacity of 1.2 terabytes (2.4 terabytes compressed) on a single cartridge, with a transfer rate of over 100 MB/s (megabytes per second).

Overland's VR2 substantially increases the capacity and throughput of linear tape formats. The first successful implementation of Partial Response Maximum Likelihood (PRML) channel encoding technology on linear tape drive platforms, VR2 can increase native capacity and native data transfer rate performance of existing linear tape technologies by as much as 50 to 100 percent without requiring any changes in tape path design, recording heads and/or media. This is accomplished by achieving rate efficiency of greater than 99 percent, making it one of the most effective PRML implementations ever developed.

"IT customers are looking for data protection solutions that can help them keep up with the explosion of data on their network," said Duncan Furness, vice president Quantum's DLTtape Group. "Overland's VR2 technology will help us deliver on customer needs for greater capacity and performance while helping DLTtape to remain the standard of choice for reliable tape solutions well into the future."

Christopher Calisi, president and CEO of Overland, said, "The majority of our tape automation business is based upon DLT, and we are pleased that VR2 will be an enabling technology to advance the future success of DLTtape drives. Quantum now joins a growing roster of companies who have licensed VR2 including StorageTek, Seagate, Imation and Tandberg Data. We are optimistic that VR2 licensing revenue will make a meaningful contribution to Overland's profitability beginning in calendar 2002."

    About Overland
Overland Data is a global supplier of innovative data storage and storage automation solutions for computer networks. The company's reputation for delivering high availability products, as well as its award-winning SmartScale Storage(R) architecture which set the standard for intelligent automated storage and scalability, has established Overland as a leader in the mid-range tape automation market. Overland sells its products worldwide through leading OEMs, commercial distributors, storage integrators and value-added resellers. For more information about Overland and its data storage solutions, visit www.overlanddata.com.

Except for the factual statements made herein, the information contained in this press release consists of forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Words and expressions reflecting optimism and satisfaction with current prospects, as well as words such as "believe," "intends," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," and variations thereof, identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that a statement is not forward-looking. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance, and the Company's actual results could differ materially from those contained in such statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include unexpected shortages of critical components, rescheduling or cancellation of customer orders, loss of a major customer, the timing and market acceptance of new product introductions by the Company and its competitors, general competition and price pressures in the marketplace, and the Company's ability to control costs and expenses. Reference is also made to other factors set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including the "Risk Factors," "Management's Discussion and Analysis" and other sections of the Company's Form 10-K for the most recently completed fiscal year. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release, and the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements to reflect new information, events or circumstances after the date of this release.

DLT, DLTtape and Super DLTtape are registered trademarks of Quantum Corporation worldwide.

CONTACT:          Overland Data Inc., San Diego
                  Cynthia Bond / Vernon LoForti, 858/571-5555
                  cbond@overlanddata.com / vloforti@overlanddata.com
                  http://www.overlanddata.com
                  or
                  Mentus Inc., San Diego
                  Chris Dale, 858/455-5500
                  cdale@mentusonline.com
                  www.mentusonline.com

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