Sesame Workshop Library, Including 35 Years Of Sesame Street Programming, To Be Digitally Preserved

Storage Solution from Hitachi and Nexsan to Help Future Generations of Children and Their Parents Learn "How to get to Sesame Street"

SAN JOSE and WOODLAND HILLS, Calif., April 21, 2004 - There are even more sunny days ahead for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization responsible for bringing Sesame Street and so much more to millions of children around the world each day. Nexsan Technologies and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies will provide the company with a data storage solution as part of Sesame Workshop's asset and archive initiative, digitally storing 35 years of media content and making it available online for use in future productions.

Seventy-four million kids from three generations have watched at least one of the more than 4,000 episodes of Sesame Street since it debuted November 10, 1969. All of these past and future episodes, including programming from other Sesame Workshop shows, like the award-winning Dragon Tales and Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat, will be stored on a Nexsan ATABeastT disk vault featuring Hitachi Deskstar hard drives. The overall data storage capacity for the enterprise-class RAID array will total 10.5TB, more bites than even Cookie Monster could put away!

"Hitachi and Nexsan have solved a technology and budget challenge for Sesame Workshop," said Fred Cotton, Director of Technical Operations, Sesame Workshop. "We frequently draw upon archived content for use in newer productions and immediate online access to our video library is a requirement. Nexsan and Hitachi have provided an ideal solution that is consistent with their shared reputation for storage innovation. We welcome this newest Beast to the Sesame Workshop family!"

In the selection process, the superior flexibility of the system across heterogeneous environments led to Sesame Workshop choosing Nexsan storage with Hitachi drives as its best choice for its massive, global initiative. The advanced design and features of the ATABeast, which contains 42 high-capacity 250GB Hitachi disk drives, enables higher availability and greater data protection of Sesame Workshop's assets. Rather than simply archiving the vast amounts of video, the project will enable Sesame Workshop to also have immediate online access to all of its content.

"It is important that iconic institutions like Sesame Workshop step into the future to preserve their past," said Brendan Kinkade, vice president of marketing at Nexsan. "We are pleased to know that precious assets such as Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, Cookie Monster and the rest of the Sesame Street gang will live on for future generations on a storage platform provided by Nexsan."

The ATABeast disk vault sets the bar in high-end, high-capacity storage, delivering industry-leading features with unparalleled density and security. ATABeast offers a total cost of ownership that establishes new standards of affordability. ATABeast is an enterprise-class RAID array built around the latest award-winning ATA technology from Nexsan incorporating high-capacity ATA disk drives from Hitachi. It is OS independent, needing no special software drivers or server-based management applications. ATABeast's advanced design ensures that all components are also redundant and hot-swappable.

Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 hard drives deliver up to 250GB of storage capacity. The Deskstar 7K250 extends the company's long-standing tradition of performance leadership and is perfectly suited for ATA RAID applications, such as the one being implemented at Sesame Workshop.

"Sesame Workshop is synonymous with quality children's programming and we consider it an honor to have 35 years of their programming archived on Hitachi hard drives," said Jose Antelo, general manager, 3.5-inch Consumer and Commercial HDDs, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

About Nexsan Technologies
Nexsan Technologies, headquartered in Woodland Hills, Calif., is the leader in innovative and correct cost storage solutions. The company creates and delivers award-winning, storage-centric hardware and application-based solutions worldwide through one of the most diverse and established networks of professionals in the storage industry. Next generation Nexsan storage products are designed for corporate, graphics, medical imaging, animation and special effects, real time/event monitored/ online/off site storage, Internet delivered content, digital film and video, financial on-line transaction data, music and voice, video security, and document imaging. For more information, please see the company's website at http://www.nexsan.com.

About Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was founded in 2003 as a result of the strategic combination of Hitachi's and IBM's storage technology businesses. The company's goal is to enable users to fully engage in the digital lifestyle by providing access to large amounts of storage capacity in formats suitable for the office, on the road and in the home.

The company offers customers worldwide a comprehensive range of storage products for desktop computers, high-performance servers and mobile devices. For more information on Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, please visit the company's Web site at http://www.hitachigst.com.

About Hitachi, Ltd.
Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company, with approximately 340,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2002 (ended March 31, 2003) consolidated sales totaled 8,191.7 billion yen ($68.3 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors, including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's Web site at http://www.hitachigst.com.

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