FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
READ-RITE ENTERS GMR RECORDING HEAD MARKET FOR HIGH-END ENTERPRISE DISK DRIVES; COMPANY RECEIVES VOLUME PRODUCTION ORDERS FOR QUANTUM'S HIGH-END 10K RPM DRIVE

MILPITAS, CA - February 23, 2000 -- Read-Rite Corporation (Nasdaq: RDRT) today announced its entrance into the high-end of the enterprise disk drive market, having received volume production orders for its GMR heads (HGAs) for Quantum Corporation's high-end 10,000 rpm disk drive, the Atlas� 10K II. The Atlas� 10K II is the industry's highest density 10,000-RPM disk drive with a 7.7 Gigabit per square inch areal density, a 4.7 ms seek time, and capacities ranging from 9.2 GB to 73.4 GB.

"We are excited to have been chosen by Quantum as a strategic supplier on this new and exciting 10,000 rpm enterprise drive. Our innovative GMR head technology and mass production capability, which utilizes components from our record-setting areal density and data rate demonstrations, earned us this opportunity on Quantum's Atlas drive program. This is a new market opportunity for Read-Rite, and one that utilizes many more heads per drive than the traditional desk-top drive business." said Alan S. Lowe, president and chief operating officer. "We look forward to strengthening our relationship with Quantum and the opportunity to continue providing our customers with leading edge technology for the desktop and high-end hard disk drive market as well as the super DLT tapehead market," he added.

Founded in 1980, Quantum Corporation (www.quantum.com) is the world's leading storage supplier in five of the seven markets it serves: desktop hard disk drives, tape drives, network attached storage (NAS) appliances, solid state systems and hard disk drives for the emerging personal video recorder (PVR) market Quantum is also the second largest supplier of mid-range tape automation systems and a leading supplier of high-end hard disk drives. In 1999 Quantum became the first Silicon Valley company to issue tracking stock, replacing its existing common stock with the ticker symbols DSS and HDD, which track the separate performance of the company's DLT and Storage Systems and Hard Disk Drive businesses. Both stocks are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Selling its products through OEM and distribution channels worldwide, sales for the fiscal year ending March 1999 were $1.3 billion for Quantum's DLT and Storage Systems Group and $3.6 billion for Quantum's Hard Disk Drive Group.

Read-Rite Corporation is one of the world�s leading independent manufacturers of magnetic recording heads, head gimbal assemblies (HGAs) and head stack assemblies (HSAs) for disk drives and tape drives. The company is headquartered in Milpitas, California and has operations in Japan, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore. The company�s home page on the world wide web can be reached at http://www.readrite.com.

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