ToughDisk to Offer Ruggedized Disk Storage
in Hot-Swappable and Standard 3.5" Form Factors

Moorestown, NJ (January 27, 2004)…Formation, Inc. today announced the release of the ToughDisk® line of rugged hard disks – high-performance, removable data storage units built specifically for extreme environments. ToughDisk performs reliably in temperature, shock, vibration, humidity and dust conditions that would destroy conventional hard disks, at less than 10% of the cost of solid-state storage.

Two ToughDisk models, TD7200 and TD3500, will be unveiled in Booth 1546 at West 2004, taking place February 3-5, 2004 in San Diego, CA. Both address the ever-growing demand for data storage capacity and performance in harsh environments.

The TD7200 model offers:

• Hot-swappable, self-contained rugged COTS mass memory units that integrate a complete sub-system into a single diskpack

• 160 GByte capacity

• Dual Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces to provide data transfer rates of up to 110 MB/s

• RAID 0, 1 and 10 functionality for faster performance and data redundancy.

• Protection from shock, vibration, temperature, humidity, dust and altitude

• On-board processor that frees host platform, manages temperature, reports BIT and allows host control

The TD3500 Series ToughDisk offers:

• Drop-in, rugged COTS replacement for standard 3.5" low profile disk drives

• 80 GByte capacity

• High-speed, standard ATA, Serial ATA or SCSI interfaces

• Protection from shock, vibration, temperature, humidity, dust and altitude

• On-board processor that frees host platform, manages temperature, reports BIT and allows host control

"ToughDisk is ideal for a variety of military data storage applications," said Sam Carswell, Formation’s Chief Technology Officer. "For example, a manned or unmanned aircraft, naval vessel or ground vehicle equipped with ToughDisk can record an entire mission’s worth of operational data. The data may be stored on-board, then wirelessly off-loaded or returned to base where ToughDisk is quickly swapped with a new disk. The speed of data transfer, the storage capacity and tolerance for harsh conditions and manhandling are all necessities in these operations – and are not possible with conventional hard drives."

Formation has delivered over 1200 rugged disk systems, 11,000 high performance RAID systems, and 1200 avionics-class servers for mission-critical applications including streaming multimedia (e.g., reconnaissance data), aircraft health information and sensitive financial data. ToughDisk combines Formation’s latest patent-pending developments with over a decade of leading-edge disk application innovation.

West 2004, taking place February 3-5, 2004 in San Diego, CA is the largest event on the West Coast for communications, electronics, intelligence, information systems, imaging, military weapon systems, aviation, shipbuilding, and more. For information visit www.west2004.org.