BRISBANE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 12, 1999--

Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT), today announced that the company's 2.5 and 3.5-inch hard disk drive product lines will be distributed by Ingram Micro Inc. (NYSE: IM), the world's largest wholesale provider of technology products and services.

Ingram Micro, headquartered in Santa Ana, Calif., will add Hitachi's broad line of high-capacity drives for portable computers and high-performance 3.5-in. drives for disk arrays and workstations to its line card in United States and Canada. The agreement with Ingram Micro, marks a significant expansion of channel availability for Hitachi drives.

"Quality and performance have made Hitachi one of the world's leading suppliers of disk drives for notebook computers, and our current line of 3.5-in. products received strong ratings in competitive evaluations by the trade press," said Gary Galusha, vice president, hard disk drives, in the Computer Division of Hitachi America, Ltd. "Adding Ingram Micro to the Hitachi

hard drive team will help us to maintain the strong, consistent growth in sales volume that we have achieved in the last few years."

"Reliable, high-capacity storage products play a vital role in today's most advanced information technology products," said Thad Bennett, director of mass storage, at Ingram Micro. "Hitachi's years of experience producing data storage systems for critical applications leads to great products for integration by OEMs and resellers, and we are very pleased to add the company's line to our card."

Hitachi's 2.5-inch hard drives feature storage capacities of 4.3 to 18 Gigabytes (GB), in the slim and lightweight form factors required for today's advanced notebook computers. Hitachi recently announced a family of 2.5-in. drives that use advanced GMR head and digital read/write channel technology to achieve data density of 10.79 Gb/in2, providing storage capacity of 18.1 GB in a drive not much larger than an audio cassette tape.

Hitachi's 3.5-inch drive offerings include models with 9.1, 18.2, and 36GB capacities, featuring either Ultra SCSI (LVD) or FC-AL (Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop) interfaces for extremely fast data transfer. Designed for RAID systems, servers and high throughput operating environments such as multimedia production and professional digital video editing, Hitachi 3.5-inch drives deliver the capacity and performance needed by the most demanding applications.

About the Companies

Ingram Micro Inc. is the world's largest wholesale distributor of technology products and services and a leading provider of assembly and integration services, with sales of $25.5 billion in the past four reported quarters. The company and its subsidiaries operate in 34 countries and distribute more than 225,000 products to more than 140,000 resellers in 130 countries. Ingram Micro can be found at www.ingrammicro.com.

Hitachi America, Ltd., Computer Division, supplies high-performance computer storage products and multimedia products to OEMs, value-added resellers, system integrators and distributors. The division's products include high-capacity hard disk drives and optical drives, digital multimedia recorders, hand-held computers, LCD projectors, color laser beam printers and flat panel displays.

Hitachi America, Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., Japan, markets and manufactures a broad range of electronics, computer systems, consumer electronics and semiconductor products, and provides industrial equipment and services throughout the U.S. Additional information is available at Hitachi America's web site at http://www.hitachi.com.

Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 1998 (ended March 31, 1999) consolidated sales of 7,977 billion yen ($65.9 billion)(a). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://www.hitachi.co.jp.

(a) At an exchange rate of 121 yen to the dollar.