ExcelStor began in the hard drive industry with their acquisition of Conner Technology PLC in 2001, alongside their assets. Finis Conner was certainly a legend of the hard drive industry, his mark remaining today. Nonetheless, it is a shame that his third hard drive corporation never took off as hoped.
In March 2002, ExcelStor would sign a deal with IBM, allowing them to produce IBM-designed drives with a few limitations involved. Conner Technology’s designs wouldn’t end up completely abandoned, developing into drives such as the Gemini G140, with subsequent releases of this HDA with models like the ES3230. ExcelStor’s native designs never surpassed 80GB in capacity with the Gemini G280.
Drive Attributes ---------------------------------------- ExcelStor Technology CT210 ---------------------------------------- Capacity 10.2GB Mfc Date 2001-11-21 Format 3.5" Interface PATA Platters 1 Heads 2 Cache 512KB RPM 5400 Origin China (ex-CT, EST) Codename Blanca (Proteus as CT) ----------------------------------------
With only a single platter, this equates to 5.1GB per surface, 10.2GB per disk. There’s nothing outstanding about these specifications, but those familiar with late-Conner Peripherals drives such as the CFS425A and Seagate Medalists post-buyout will certainly recognise the inspiration.
ExcelStor put little effort into changing Conner Technology’s original label design. This one dates from very late 2001, just a few months before the IBM deal took place.
There’s not much to speak of concerning the rear of one of these. It’s simple.
An STMicroelectronics microcontroller greets us, being a relatively large package at that. The PCB in and of itself bears many indications of being low-cost, which decidedly makes sense based on the market this was aimed for. Cache is supplied by ISSI (Integrated Silicon Solutions Inc.), a measly 512KB in total.
Very surprisingly, ExcelStor did put their name on the PCB, indicating that part production continued somewhat post-acquisition. However, upon researching this model further, Conner Technology’s branding would remain on these drives until at least early November of 2001. ExcelStor even changed the codename on these, from Proteus to Blanca. No changes seem to have been made on a circuitry level, however.
Taking a quick peek under the board, there’s some insulation material and a rather bizarre looking head-stack interconnection pin array. The spindle motor uses the classic 4-pin contact pin connection format.
Nothing fun under here either. It’s a cheaply made drive, which shows.
Certainly not an amazing outlook for the future, with a considerably high amount of issues showing via SMART (particularly the ever-increasing reallocated sector count). This drive has a meticulously high amount of slow sectors in the first 25% of the overall surface, which is somewhat of a shame.
Either way, being such a cheaply made drive and one which was picked up for just £1 a long time ago, I won’t be crying at night if this one ends up failing anytime soon.
If you missed the video I made on this drive, you can find it here: