FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE          

READ-RITE SETS A NEW DATA STORAGE WORLD RECORD OF 63.2 BILLION BITS PER SQUARE INCH USING DUAL STAGE ACTUATORS 

FREMONT, CA - October 16,  2000 -- Read-Rite Corporation (Nasdaq: RDRT)  Hutchinson Technology Incorporated (Nasdaq: HTCH), Komag Incorporated (Nasdaq: KMAG) and Guzik Technical Enterprise today announced that they have achieved a magnetic data storage world record of 63.2 billion bits per square inch or 88 gigabytes per 3.5-inch platter. This new record represents more than 25% increase over the 50 billion bits per square inch record set by Read-Rite just 6 months ago.

"Our closely tied-in research efforts with our strategic technology partners have helped us again raise the bar for recording density," said Mark Re, senior vice-president of research and development. He also added, "our organization is driven to supply the best technology for our customers in a time-to-market fashion. Paving the way to do this is our advanced research and development group, which is the best in the recording head industry!"

Scott Schaefer, chief technical officer for Hutchinson Technology stated, "we recognize Read-Rite's industry leadership in recording head technology and are pleased that Hutchinson Technology's patented aTSA dual stage actuator system assisted them in achieving this important industry milestone."

Mike Russak, executive vice president of research and development and chief technical officer at Komag, commented, "we are extremely pleased that our on-going collaboration with Read-Rite continues to set the standard for high density recording demonstrations. This most recent achievement gives us confidence that our current media manufacturing toolset remains capable of producing the high performance media which will be required to meet the demands of the most advanced storage products. The newly combined R & D resources of Komag and HMT will continue to work on these advanced demonstrations."

This areal density demonstration was accomplished with the use of the same type of integrated inductive write and advanced GMR read heads used in the 50 billion bits per square inch demonstration, advanced longitudinal media from Komag and a dual stage actuator from Hutchinson Technology. 63.2 billion bits per square inch of data were written with a linear density of 600,000 bits per inch along the concentric tracks packed at a density of 105,300 per radial inch. The on-track data was read with an uncorrected bit error rate less than one error in over a hundred million bits, and with off-track capability of 15% of the track pitch. The data rate used for this demonstration was 160 megabits per second.

Based on the results from our previous density demonstration of 50 billion bits per square inch, at track densities of 90 KTPI and higher, track following becomes increasingly difficult. This is because the non-repeatable-run-out of the conventional actuators becomes a significant fraction of the track pitch at high track densities and the use of a dual stage actuator shows that they improve the track following capability of the head at high track densities. In this areal density achievement using a dual stage actuator, we have demonstrated an improvement in track density of 15%, linear density of 10% and the corresponding areal density of more than 20%. 

This recording density world record also demonstrates that the "super-paramagnetic effect" is not a fundamental limit up to at least 63.2 billion bits per square inch. An amplitude thermal decay rate of less than 0.5% per decade of time was measured at a linear density of 587,000 bits per inch. Using a system-level design approach, Read-Rite believes that the limit imposed by the "super-paramagnetic effect" could be pushed out to much higher areal densities.

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 Fremont, California and has operations in California, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan and Singapore. The company's website is located at http://www.readrite.com. 

Read-Rite is also the majority shareholder of Scion Photonics, Inc. which designs, develops, manufactures and sells both custom and standard Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexers (DWDM) and other optical communication components to address the rapidly growing worldwide fiber-optic network expansion. The company is well funded by the backing of Read-Rite Corporation, Tyco Ventures and Integral Capital Partners. Scion's website is located at http://www.scionphotonics.com.

Hutchinson Technology is the leading worldwide supplier of suspension assemblies for disk drives. CONTACT: Todd Bradley, Investor Relations of Hutchinson Technology, 320-587-1605. http://www.htch.com 

For more information about Komag, visit Komag's Internet home page at http://www.komag.com or call Komag's Investor Relations 24-hour Hot Line at 888-66-KOMAG or 408-576-2901.

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