Conner splits its product lines into four levels of complexity under Storage Initiative

Conner Peripherals Inc this week launched the Conner Storage Initiative a scheme to categorise its storage product line to make it easier for customers (CI No 2,254). The company also launched a gaggle of products to support the scheme. The Conner Storage Initiative splits the company’s product line into four areas. The Entry market segment aims at price-sensitive users, usually with home and business personal computers, the Value market segment is driven by price and capacity and the higher performance product than the Entry level. Typical applications include databases, multimedia and workgroup computing. The Performance market segment caters for users in the most demanding environments such as client-server and high performance workstations, and the Portable market segment deals with mobile personal computer users needing low weight and power. The company believes that it will make the products easier for OEM customers to purchase, giving them a one stop shop capability.

Conner Storage Systems Group adds disk drive kits for the Unix systems market

Conner was certainly putting its money where its mouth is to back up the storage initiative with a host of storage products. First up is a pair of rigid 3.5 disk drive kits for Unix workstations, from Conner Peripherals Inc’s Conner Storage Systems Group. The models, (CS540De and CS1370De), are external and based on the company’s drive kits for the OEM market. They’re being aimed at the Performance market segment. The CS540De can hold up to 545Mb of data formatted, while its bigger brother the 1370De can handle 1.37Gb of data. The drives transfer data at 10M-bytes per second over SCSI with an average seek time of 10mS. The products feature a 256Kb buffer.

Filepro disk drives join Conner’s entry-level offerings

Nine hard disk drives, along with tape drive and software products, were announced by Conner. The Filepro 210 and 420 products slot into the entry-level sector of the company’s new Conner Storage Initiative. The 210 has a formatted capacity of 213Mb and the 410 stores 425Mb, with both disks transferring data at 4M-bytes per second. A 14mS average seek time is common to both units, as is a 32Kb buffer with write cacheing and look-ahead read. The Filepro Advantage series targets the Value Market Segment, adding the Filepro Advantage 540/1080 to the existing Filepro Advantage 340Mb model. The 540/1080 offers 540Mb of formatted capacity on two platters and 1Gb on four. The 3.5 drives feature 12mS or 10.5mS seek time, 4,500rpm, and up to 17M-bytes per second transfer rate. The 256Kb buffer includes write cacheing and look-ahead read, as with the other Filepro models, and these disks have a 300,000 hour mean-time between failures. The Performance market sector gets the Filepro Performance series, incorporating the Filepro 1060 low profile 3.5 model storing just over 1Gb of formatted data on four disks and the Filepro 2120 drive, which is 1.625 high and stores over 2Gb on eight platters. The disks have a seek time of 9mS to 9.5mS with a rotation speed of 5,400rpm. Transferring data at up to 55M-bytes-per-second the disks can connect to computers using either SCSI-2 and Fast and Wide. The disks also include RAID Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks, for increased reliability. The Notebook segement of the initiative gets three products, offering 170Mb, 250Mb and 340Mb. With a 2.5 form factor, they offer 12mS access time and 4,500rpm disk rotation time with a 3.5M-bytes per second sustained data transfer rate. The drives weigh seven ounces and can withstand up to 300 Gs of shock. Single unit evaluation prices on Filepros: 210 – $190, 420 – $350, Advantage 540 – $490, Advantage 1080 – $900, Performance 1060 – $1,000, Performance 2120 – $1,800, Notebook 170 – $250, Notebook 250 – $350, Notebook 340 – $450. Evaluation availability from now until year end.

DiskStor drives add 1.37Mb model

Conner has added to its DiskStor hard drive range with a 1.37Mb product aimed at the Perfor

mance sector of its Storage Initiative. The 3.5 drive is aimed at technical workstations and network servers. It has an average seek time of 10mS and a 256Kb buffer. Connecting to the computer with a Fast SCSI-2 interface, the unit can transfer data at up to 10M-bytes per second.

Flush-mount DAT Autoloader

Conner Tape Products Group in Costa Mesa, California, formerly Archive Corp, is shipping the flush mount DDS-2 DAT Autoloader internal system, aimed at the Performance sector of Conner’s Storage Initiative. Fitting the 5.25 form factor, it has a four cassette magazine which loads and unloads 4mm cassettes, on which it can store 32Gb in under 12 hours. It has a data transfer rate of 400K-bytes per second and can be fitted with an optional 12 cassette magazine. The new device includes an eight-character LED display.

TapeStor gains a 2Gb DAT model

Conner Storage Systems Group in Lake Mary, Florida (formerly Maynard) has fleshed out its TapeStor range of tape drives with a 2Gb Digital Audio Tape drive. Installed internally, it is aimed at small to mid-size networks and uses a 4mm DAT. It has an average transfer rate of 183K-bytes per second. Using Conner’s Backup Exec for Windows and MS-DOS, it costs $1,150 one-off under model number C4320RW. Using the software for Windows NT it costs $1,300 under model number C4320RT-NT. The product is aimed at the Conner Value market sector through the retail channel.

Backup Exec for Windows, NT

Conner Software Products Group, Lake Mary again, has introduced versions of Backup Exec for Windows and Windows NT. Backup Exec is a software product for workstation and network back-up. Conforming to the Windows File Manager interface, the system supports most SCSI devices under Windows 3.1 and supports the Windows NT Backup utility. It can transfer at up to 70M-bytes per minute. It also reports tape contents, open-file skip logs and errors. NetWare and OS/2 versions are promised. The Windows version costs $150 while the NT version is $600 with an introductory price of $350. The products fit into the Value and Performance sectors of the Conner Storage Initiative.