Las Vegas, Nev., NAB 2001, Sands Expo Center Booth #i6442, April 23, 2001 - Rorke Data, Inc., a subsidiary of San Jose-based Bell Microproducts, Inc. (NASDAQ: BELM), has significantly upgraded its RDD A/V Professional Series of desktop disk-based storage peripherals  to incorporate Seagate's new 180GB Barracuda disk drives. A Rorke spokesperson said the RDD A/V Pro Series now offers the highest capacity/lowest cost storage currently available for data-intensive digital audio/video applications.

Incorporating Seagate's new 180GB Barracuda drives, Rorke's single-, dual-, and four-device storage systems are now capable of attaining capacities of 720GB on the user's desktop, and up to 1.5TB with the rackmount eight-device version. The new high-capacity disk arrays do not sacrifice performance, noted Joe Rorke, VP Marketing, Rorke Data, and are ideal for professional digital A/V applications such as non-linear editing, streaming, animation and graphics. 

"The RDD series has been a renowned, and industry-approved, storage system for at least the past ten years," said Bob Herzan, VP/Worldwide Sales, A/V Division, Rorke Data. "Given the voracious storage appetite of digital post and streaming applications, we developed the RDD A/V Pro Series in response to our resellers' request for low-cost, high-performance data storage. The Barracuda 180 drives have made  this development possible, resulting in a highly unique, one-of-a-kind product."

The RDD A/V Pro Series of enclosures has been engineered to incorporate Seagate's highest capacity devices (180GB per drive), as well as the company's powerful 15,000 rpm Cheetah drives. Seagate has worked with Rorke for ten years on a range of A/V-related issues, from enclosure and backplane designs to OEM-specific micro-code upgrades and drive settings. Rorke Data is a primary Seagate OEM to the digital A/V industry.

Seagate's Barracuda 180 is the largest-capacity disk drive in the world and offers users the lowest cost-per-gigabyte enterprise drive currently on the market. With a formatted capacity of 181.6GB, the drive is perfect for all bulk storage applications, has a new 16MB V-code cache option to gain even more performance in professional audio/video applications, and has been enhanced with Seagate's new RV sensor to excel in multi-drive environments. The Barracuda 180 spins at 7,200 RPM,  has a formatted data transfer rate of up to 47MB/sec., and is available in the  industry-standard Ultra 160 SCSI interface. The Barracuda 180, like all of Seagate's high-end enterprise class drives, includes a full five-year warranty with a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) rating of 1,200,000 hours.

About Seagate
Seagate is the world's leading provider of storage technology for Internet, business and consumer applications. The Company's products include disc drives for the Enterprise, PCs and Consumer Electronics, as well as Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions and Server Appliances. Seagate's market leadership is based on delivering award-winning products, customer support and reliability to meet the world's growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at www.seagate.com.

About Rorke Data
Rorke Data is a full digital storage solutions provider with expertise in Fibre-Channel RAID, SAN, DVD, tape and optical libraries, Unix, NT and Mac environments, high bandwidth networks, digital asset and document management, and engineering and maintenance services.  Founded in 1985, Rorke Data, together with its 
European subsidiary, Rorke Data Europe, located in Emmen, The Netherlands, is composed of six divisions: Medical Archive Applications, Audio/Video, Prepress, Imaging, Document Management, Engineering and Installation Services. More information about Rorke Data can be found at www.rorke.com. Rorke Data is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bell Microproducts, Inc. (Nasdaq: BELM).

About Bell Microproducts
Bell Microproducts is an international value added provider of a wide range of high technology products, solutions, and services to the industrial and commercial marketplace. The company's offering includes semiconductors, computer platforms, peripherals, and storage products of various types including desktop, high-end computer and storage subsystems, Fibre-Channel connectivity products, RAID, NAS and SAN storage systems and back-up products. Bell Microproducts is an industry-recognized specialist in storage products and is one of the world's largest storage-centric value-added distributors. 

The company's products are available at any level of integration from components, to subsystem assemblies, to fully integrated, tested and certified system solutions. The company adds value with a broad range of services including testing, software loading, kitting, mass storage system integration, and computer system integration. Trained and certified technical personnel complete each of these processes at Bell Microproducts' ISO 9002 facilities. Bell Microproducts markets and distributes more than 150 brand name product lines, as well as its own BellStor storage and TradeMark computer brands, to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), contract electronic manufacturing services (EMS) customers, value-added resellers (VARs) and system integrators in the Americas and Europe. More information can be found in SEC filings, or by visiting the Bell Microproducts website at www.bellmicro.com.

Safe Harbor Statement
This release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.  Such forward-looking statements, which reflect the Company's current views of future events and financial performance, involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results or facts to differ materially from such statements for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to: the ability to successfully integrate the operations of recent acquisitions, industry conditions, changes in product supply, pricing, and customer demand, competition, other vagaries in the computer and electronic components markets, changes in relationships with key suppliers, foreign currency fluctuations and the other risks described from time to time in the Company's reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission (including the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K). Investors should take such risks into account when making investment decisions.  Shareholders and other readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made.  The company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements. 

For more information on the RDD A/V Pro Series with Barracuda 180 drives, contact: Rorke Data, Inc., 7626 Golden Triangle Drive, Eden Prairie, MN  55344; 800/328-8147 or 952/829-0300;  fax: 952/829-0988;  website:  www.rorke.com.

Seagate, Seagate Technology, Cheetah and Barracuda are registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.