DATA STORAGE NEWS

QUANTUM TO OFFER UNPARALLELED RANGE OF LEADING TAPE TECHNOLOGIES WITH
ACQUISITION OF CERTANCE

Acquisition Will Expand Product and Intellectual Property Portfolio
and Broaden End-User Customer Base

SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 20, 2004 -- Quantum Corp. (NYSE:DSS), a global
leader in storage, today announced it has signed a definitive
agreement to acquire Certance, a privately held and leading global
supplier of tape drives and data protection solutions. With the
acquisition, Quantum will offer end-users an unparalleled range of
leading tape technology choices for best meeting their individual
backup, recovery and archive needs. The acquisition will also enhance
Quantum's tape drive and media business by expanding its product and
intellectual property portfolio, broadening its end-user customer base
and further strengthening its revenue- and cash-generating foundation.
The acquisition of Certance, which has been profitable for three
consecutive years, is expected to be accretive in the combined
company's first year.

Under the terms of the definitive agreement, Quantum will acquire all
of Certance for $60 million in an all-cash transaction, and integrate
it into Quantum. This purchase price excludes the distribution to the
sellers of up to $34 million cash from Certance's balance sheet. The
closing of the transaction is subject to antitrust review, as well as
other customary closing conditions, and Quantum expects the
acquisition to close within the fourth calendar quarter of 2004.

"Today's announcement reinforces Quantum's commitment to providing
customers with tape technologies best suited for current and future
environments," said Rick Belluzzo, chairman and CEO of Quantum. "As a
newly combined $1 billion company building on Quantum's and Certance's
complementary strengths, we will offer the industry's broadest
portfolio of tape and disk systems for backup, recovery and archive."

"Certance has made its mark as a leader in developing, manufacturing
and marketing innovative new data protection solutions for companies
of all sizes," said Howard Matthews, president and CEO of Certance.
"We are excited about this combination because of the opportunity it
provides both Certance and Quantum to serve an even broader range of
customer needs with regard to reliability, capacity, performance and
value."

"This is a superb move because the two companies have historically
been strongest in different parts of the market -- Certance in the
entry-level and Quantum in the mid-range," said Bob Abraham, president
of Freeman Reports. "The combination will create operational
synergies, benefiting end-users and helping to address the desire of
system OEMs and tape automation providers to streamline supply chain
management."

As a result of the Certance acquisition, Quantum will add Travan,
DDS/DAT and LTO Ultrium-format technology products to its current
portfolio of DLTtape® drives, as well as a DAT-72 autoloader and a
disk-to-disk-to-tape appliance for small and medium-size businesses
(SMB). Quantum's media model will also benefit from the recurring
revenue stream provided by media royalties and branded media products.
The addition of LTO technology devices to Quantum's Storage Devices
product lines will create greater alignment with Quantum's Storage
Systems business, which already offers LTO Ultrium-format drives in
its tape automation systems.

The complementary nature of this combination can be seen in more than
just the end-users the two companies serve. For example, while both
companies sell through OEMs and the channel, Certance has a
particularly robust channel business that aligns well with the strong
relationships Quantum maintains with all major system OEMs and tape
automation providers. In addition, Certance's broad, global channel
presence will reinforce the progress Quantum has made over the past
year internationally in further expanding its branded channel business
and pursuing opportunities for increased growth.

Both Certance and Quantum have a strong intellectual property base and
history of customer-driven innovation in their tape drive products.
Certance is an established leader in DDS/DAT development and a
co-founder of the LTO Ultrium-format technology. It was also the
first company to introduce a disk-to-disk-to-tape appliance for SMB
customers offering high-end functionality at an SMB-affordable price
point. Quantum created DLTtape technology and introduced the first
tape drive with over a half-terabyte of capacity.* The company is
also the leader in developing device-level manageability tools,
including DLTSage™ and DLTIce™. DLTSage is an award winning
diagnostic architecture for predicting and preventing tape drive and
media failures, and DLTIce serves the burgeoning regulatory compliance
market by providing Write Once, Read Many (WORM) functionality using a
standard Super DLTtape II media cartridge.

Quantum's acquisition of Certance is just the latest example of
actions the company has taken over the past year to continue at the
forefront of meeting customers' evolving storage needs. Last fall, it
introduced three best-in-class products: the SDLT 600 tape drive,
PX720 tape library and DX100 disk-based enhanced backup system. This
summer Quantum not only launched DLTIce but also announced a new DLT
roadmap that includes plans to deliver over 10 terabytes on a single
media cartridge within the next decade.

Also over the past year, Certance has been the first in the industry
to introduce a range of new products, including an LTO-3 tape drive, a
DAT-72 autoloader, and a disk-to-disk-to-tape appliance for SMB
customers.

"We are proud of Certance's accomplishments as an independent company
spun out from Seagate four years ago," said Ken Hao, managing
director, Silver Lake Partners, speaking on behalf of the New SAC
investment group, the seller. "We are confident that Certance's
long-term strategic objectives will be accelerated within Quantum."

Conference Call and Audio Webcast Notification
Quantum will hold a conference call today, Oct. 20, 2004, at 2 p.m.
PDT, to discuss both its planned acquisition of Certance and fiscal
second quarter results. Press and industry analysts are invited to
attend in listen-only mode. Dial-in number: 303-262-2131 (U.S. &
International). Quantum will provide a live audio webcast of the
conference call beginning today, Oct. 20, 2004, at 2 p.m. PDT. Site
for the webcast and related information:
http://investors.quantum.com/.

About Certance
Certance is a worldwide market leader providing the broadest range of
tape backup products and data protection solutions with a commitment
to innovative, cost-effective data protection for companies of all
sizes. Headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, Certance produces a
full array of data protection solutions, including LTO Ultrium-format,
DDS/DAT and Travan tape technologies, and DPA-disk based technologies,
including CP 3100 data protection solutions. With more than 12
million tape devices installed worldwide, the company designs,
manufactures and markets a wide range of solutions to meet the backup,
restore and archive needs of virtually every platform from notebooks
and PCs to enterprise servers. Certance can be found around the globe
and at http://www.Certance.com/.

About Quantum
Quantum Corp. (NYSE:DSS), founded in 1980, is a global leader in
storage, delivering highly reliable backup, recovery and archive
solutions that meet demanding requirements for data integrity and
availability with superior price/performance and comprehensive service
and support. Quantum is the world's largest supplier of half-inch
cartridge tape drives, and its DLTtape® technology is the standard for
tape backup, recovery and archive of business-critical data for the
mid-range enterprise. Quantum offers the broadest portfolio of tape
autoloaders and libraries and is one of the pioneers in the disk-based
backup market, providing solutions that emulate a tape library but are
optimized for backup and recovery. Quantum sales for the fiscal year
ended March 31, 2004, were approximately $808 million. Quantum Corp.,
1650 Technology Drive, Suite 800, San Jose, CA 95110, (408) 944-4000,
www.quantum.com.

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Linear Tape-Open, LTO, the LTO logo, Ultrium, and the Ultrium logo are
trademarks of Certance, HP and IBM in the US, other countries, or
both.

Quantum, the Quantum logo, DLT and DLTtape are trademarks of Quantum
Corporation registered in the United States and other countries. All
other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the U.S. Private Securities Litigation
Reform Act of 1995: This press release contains "forward-looking"
statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation
Reform Act of 1995. Specifically, without limitation, statements
relating to: i) the announced acquisition of Certance, including
expected benefits and impacts of the acquisition, ii) the expectation
that the acquisition will be accretive in the combined company's first
year, iii) anticipated timing of the close of the acquisition, iv) the
new DLT roadmap that includes plans to deliver over 10 terabytes on a
single media cartridge within the next decade, and v) Certance's long
term strategic objectives being accelerated within Quantum are
forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Safe Harbor.
These statements are based on management's current expectations and
are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. As a result, actual
results may differ materially from the forward-looking statements
contained herein. Factors that could cause actual results to differ
materially from those described herein include, but are not limited
to, the inability to obtain regulatory approvals for the acquisition,
our inability to successfully integrate the businesses of Quantum and
Certance, costs related to the acquisition, labor integration issues,
our ability to successfully execute to our product roadmaps and timely
ship our products, and acceptance of, or demand for, our products
being lower than anticipated. More detailed information about these
risk factors, and additional risk factors, are set forth in Quantum's
periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission,
including, but not limited to, those risks and uncertainties listed in
the section entitled "Management's Discussion and Analysis of
Financial Condition and Results of Operations -- Risk Factors," on
pages 34 to 45 in Quantum's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with
the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 4, 2004 and pages 38
to 49 in Quantum's Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the
Securities and Exchange Commission on June 14, 2004. In particular,
you should review the risk factors on pages 34, 37 and 41 of our Form
10-Q under the headings "Our operating results depend on new product
introductions, which may not be successful, in which case, our
business, financial condition and operating results may be materially
and adversely affected," "We have made and may continue to make
significant changes to our infrastructure and management, including
consolidating or eliminating systems and functions and reducing the
number of employees supporting functions. If we do not manage the
changes that we implement successfully, our business could be
disrupted and that could adversely impact our results of operations
and financial condition," and "We have engaged in and may in the
future engage in acquisitions of companies, technologies or products,
and the failure to integrate any such acquisitions could harm our
business, financial condition and operating results." Quantum
expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter its
forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information,
future events or otherwise.