New Maxtor Ultra16 Hard Drive Kits are Easy to Install

and Give Consumers Blazing Hard Drive Performance with Tons of Capacity

Dubai, UAE - September 13 2004--Maxtor Corporation (NYSE: MXO), a worldwide leader in hard disk drives and consumer storage solutions, today announced that it is shipping its new Maxtor SATA Ultra16 Hard Drive Kits. As the only retail hard drive featuring a 16MB buffer and offering best-in-class 7200RPM performance, Maxtor's new Ultra16 kits are perfect for consumers who want to upgrade their systems for an improved multimedia, computing and gaming experience. The new Ultra16 Hard Drive Kits come with a high-performance Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive and offer capacities up to 300GB, allowing consumers to store 5,000 hours of their favorite MP3s, 230,000 digital photos (JPEG) or 144 high-definition video games.

Maxtor's easy-to-install SATA Ultra16 Hard Drive Kit includes an installation guide with step-by-step instructions, a SATA cable and mounting screws. The kit also includes Maxtor's popular MaxBlastTM installation software, which partitions and formats the drive for use, and helps copy files from the old hard drive to the new Maxtor drive. In addition, the new Ultra16 drive offers a 150MB/sec interface speed and SATA II features including Native Command Queuing (NCQ) for more intelligent hard drive operation, and runs quietly with a fluid dynamic bearing motor.

"Customers continue to rely on Maxtor's innovative storage solutions. Our retail product line, including our award-winning Maxtor OneTouch external drive, has become the industry benchmark in desktop performance, reliability and backup," said Stacey Lund, executive director of Maxtor's Consumer Products Group. "We take pride in offering a desktop hard drive solution for everyone from extreme gamers to cost-conscious consumers."

PC or Mac users who play intense games, edit digital videos, juggle multiple applications at once, or who have an older parallel ATA system are perfect candidates to upgrade their systems to SATA. To upgrade, customers simply install a Maxtor Ultra16 hard drive and a SATA controller card, or install the drive directly with any new motherboard that supports SATA. Compared to parallel ATA, new SATA-enabled PC systems, particularly with NCQ, will show improved performance while multithreading or running two streams of multimedia content at the same time.

Pricing and Availability

Maxtor 250GB and 300GB SATA Ultra16 Hard Drive Kits are available through major distribution and retail channels. Manufacturer's suggested retail prices are $249 & $299 respectively. Parallel ATA Ultra16 Hard Drive Kits will be available in Q4 2004.

For more information about Maxtor's hard drives or retail locations, please visit the company's website at www.maxtor.com.

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About Maxtor
Maxtor Corporation (www.maxtor.com) is one of the world's leading suppliers of hard disk drives and data storage solutions. The company has an expansive line of storage products for desktop computers, storage systems, high-performance Intel-based servers, and consumer electronics. Maxtor has a reputation as a proven market leader, built by consistently providing high-quality products and service and support for its customers. Maxtor and its products can be found at www.maxtor.com or by calling toll-free (800) 2-MAXTOR. Maxtor is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol MXO.

Note: Maxtor, MaxBlast and the stylized Maxtor logo are registered trademarks, and Ultra16 and Maxtor OneTouch are trademarks of Maxtor Corporation.  All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners.

For purposes of measuring disk drive storage capacity, one gigabyte (GB) represents one billion bytes. 

Best-in-class 7200 RPM performance is based on PC Mark 2004 using the following system configuration: Intel 925X Express platform (ICH6), 3.2GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor, 512 MB DDR2 memory with Intel IAA driver revision 4.5. DiamondMax 10 300GB Serial ATA benchmark data was compared with current, volume shipping 7200 RPM competing drives as of July 2004.

File capacity figures are provided by Jon  Peddie Research. For details see www.jonpeddie.com.

This announcement relating to Maxtor may contain forward-looking statements concerning future technology, products incorporating that technology, and Maxtor's execution. These statements are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties which could materially affect the company's results, including, but not limited to, market demand for hard disk drives, integration of the company's products with products produced by others, the company's ability to execute future production ramps and utilize manufacturing assets efficiently, pricing, competition, and the significant uncertainty of market acceptance of new products and technologies.  These and other risk factors are contained in documents that the company files with the SEC, including the Form 10-K for fiscal 2003 and its recent 10-Qs.  Maxtor is under no obligation to, and expressly disclaims any responsibility to update or alter, its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Media Contact:
Ms Sawsan Ghanem,
PR Consultant,
Active PR
Tel: +9714-3900228
Fax: +9714-3904656
E-mail: activepr@emirates.net.ae or sawsan@activepr.biz
Address: P.O. Box 502152,
Dubai,
UAE

© Press Release 2004