FORMATION COMBINES TOUGHDISK® WITH ADVANCED INTEGRATED RECORDER (AIR)
TO DELIVER RUGGED RECORDER FOR NAVAL ENVIRONMENT

“Drop-in” replacement of standard hard disks with TD3500 ToughDisk dramatically improves
environmental performance of AIR’s off-the-shelf rackmount server

MOORESTOWN, NJ, USA (March 22, 2005)…Formation, Inc. announced today that it has delivered the first of its Advanced Integrated Recorder (AIR) systems to be part of a new submarine communications system. To survive the submarine’s humidity, pressure and shock requirements, the AIR system employs commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) rackmount servers outfitted with Formation’s TD3500 ToughDisk hard drive.

“By replacing standard hard disks with ToughDisk in our existing COTS server, we were able to meet both the recording requirements and difficult environmental requirements of our customer’s naval application,” indicated Cliff Oberholtzer, Formation’s Product Director. “This ToughDisk-AIR combination provides a much more rugged solution with only a small increase in price over standard COTS equipment.”

“AIR and ToughDisk are two of our company’s main product lines, and a naval recording application is an ideal opportunity to combine the advantages of both,” commented Nim Evatt, Formation’s CEO. “Our TD3500 ToughDisk is a rugged, drop-in replacement for standard 3.5 inch hard drives, and our AIR system uses COTS servers that easily accept ToughDisk. The result is a much more survivable computer through the elimination of its weakest element – an unprotected hard disk.”

Formation offers two ToughDisk models, TD3500 and TD7200, both of which address the ever-growing demand for cost-effective data storage capacity and performance in harsh environments. The AIR system is used in air traffic control, air defense and command & control centers to record, store and replay synchronized workstation screen activity, radar, LAN and voice data in a single time-tagged system.