Seagate Technology Incorporated

Brian John Higley

Jonathan Williams Haines

Bradley John Gill

A method and system for providing autonomous event logging and retrieval for failure analysis. In one implementation, storage device firmware monitors and records events (e.g., storage device errors and/or failures) to the storage device flash in substantially real time from power on of the storage device to power off. Additionally, diagnostic data relating to an event, including a time stamp and storage device environmental conditions are recorded. The logged event data may be utilized to streamline failure analysis by determining whether the storage device failed and if so, when the storage device failed and what the conditions of the storage device were at the time of the failure. Such information may be used for failure, warranty, integrator, and/or troubleshooting analysis.

Autonomous event logging for drive failure analysis

Audio-visual drive optimized for response to an undetected synchronization field

A method, disc drive, and data handling system for optimizing the data writing/transmitting process are disclosed. The disc drive implemented method involves detecting at a current burst whether data written to a previous wedge is recoverable and making the disc drive's buffer space holding that data available for holding other data when the written data is recoverable. The disc drive implemented method also involves detecting at the current burst whether data to be written to a following wedge will encroach upon data written in adjacent tracks and allowing the data to be written in the following wedge when the encroachment is not too severe.

Drive with streaming-optimized write validation

Herein is disclosed a method and apparatus for optimizing a disc drive for audio-visual data storage and retrieval by responding to a certain read-time error in a manner that preserves data flow. In response to a read-time error in which a data sector is misread, the disc drive responds by transferring the errant data to the host nonetheless, and then by informing the host of the error. The data may be partially corrected by an error correction function. The aforementioned behavior is a departure from the traditional sequential paradigm of a conventional disc drive. The new behavior preserves data flow, a quality important to audio-visual drives.

Audio-visual drive optimized for response to a misread sector

Herein is disclosed a method and apparatus for optimizing a disc drive for audio-visual data storage and retrieval by responding to a certain write-time error in a manner that preserves data flow. In response to a write-time error in which information obtained from a servo burst indicates that the disc drive's head was either off course or anticipated to go off course, the disc drive responds by ceasing to write to the disc in synchronization with the end of writing a sector, so that a sector is not left half-written. The disc drive then transfers the sector numbers of the sectors which were improperly written or unwritten to the host. The disc drive attempts to continue writing to the disc in subsequent sectors, as soon as servo sectors once again indicate that the head is sufficiently re-centered on the track. Further, if the servo data indicates that the head may not have been well-centered between a current and previous servo burst, the sectors between those servo bursts will also be indicated to the host.

Growing community of inventors

Longmont, CO, United States of America

Brian John Higley