International Business Machines Corporation

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Netherlands B.v.

Daniel James Colegrove

Hideo Asano

Akira Kibashi

Masahiko Sato

Richard M H New

Takahiro Saito

Atsushi Kanamaru

Koichi Kushida

Kelvin Kao

Chi-Chen Wu

A method and apparatus for providing stream linking in audio/video disk media is disclosed. The present invention sets-up an audio/video stream on a disk drive, uses read and write commands for accessing contiguous data and, given an established stream, establishes a linked stream by sending a linked stream request with the number of a primary stream to the drive. The new stream inherits the beginning and ending addresses of the primary stream. Passed pointer detection is enabled for linked stream pointers passing primary stream pointers.

Method and apparatus for providing stream linking in audio/video disk media

Method and apparatus for providing stream linking in audio/video media

Embodiments of the present invention recite a method of preserving data on a hard disk drive. In one embodiment, a first copy of data is read from at least one sector of a hard disk drive and stored in a first location. A second copy of the data is stored in a non-volatile memory location of the hard disk drive. The first copy of the data is then modified to create a modified copy. The second copy of the data is then used to verify that the modified copy of data has been correctly written to the at least one sector of the hard disk drive.

Micro-journaling of data on a storage device

Embodiments of the present invention recite a method of preserving data on a hard disk drive. In one embodiment, a copy of data is read from at least one sector of a hard disk drive and stored in a memory location of the hard disk drive. At least a portion of the data in the memory location of the hard disk drive is then replaced to create a modified copy of data. A copy of the modified copy of data is then stored in a non-volatile memory location of the hard disk drive. Finally, the data from the at least one sector is replaced with the modified copy of data.

An external controller performs a thorough analysis and prediction on true requests from an application to issue a look-ahead request to an HDD or other auxiliary storage. An HDC card is connected to an HDD device which stores data and has a cache memory. The HDC card, which controls the HDD device, includes an access request tracer for tracing a true access request made by an application program executed by a host directly from the application program, a speculation request determination section for determining a speculation request to be expected later based on the traced true access request, and an HDC for issuing the determined speculation request to the HDD device.

Controller device, disk controller, auxiliary storage, computer device, and method for controlling auxiliary storage

A method and apparatus for providing passed pointer detection in audio/video streams on disk media. The present invention sets up an audio/video stream on a disk drive, uses read and write commands for accessing contiguous data and provides a pointer system that provides a warning when manipulating the pointers during fast forward and reverse functions that one pointer has passed the other. The position of a first pointer and a second pointer in at least one stream is monitored during a command execution. A determination is made when the positions of the first and second pointers cross to create a passed pointer state. An indicator is set to signal that a passed pointer state has occurred. The passed pointer indicator is then used to prevent anomalous behavior in processing of the at least one stream.

Method and apparatus for providing passed pointer detection in audio/video streams on disk media

A method and an apparatus for predicting the recovery time required until the hard disk drive is restored to a usable state from a stand-by state. The recovery time is a time required until the hard disk drive is restored to a usable state from the stand-by state. Then, the predicted recovery time is reported to the host system. When the host system knows how much time is needed until the disk drive is recovered, it can schedule a task to be completed before the hard disk drive is restarted, thereby scheduling of all the tasks in the host system can be optimized.

Method and apparatus for predicting recovery time of hard disk drive

This disclosure relates to translating cylinder-head-sector (CHS) addressing of digital data written to or read from a DASD so as to accommodate DASD storage capacities in excess of the approximately five hundred twenty eight megabyte capacity limit imposed by Interrupt 13 design in an Industry Standard Architecture personal computer system. A CHS (cylinder-head-sector) address in a first frame of reference which meets the restraints of Interrupt 13 design in the ISA BIOS is translated to a CHS address in a second frame of reference which meets the physical characteristics of a DASD which is otherwise outside the restraints of Interrupt 13 design in the ISA BIOS. Determination of a conversion factor for translation of CHS addresses between the first and second frames of reference for cylinder and head numbers, conversion, and translation can occur as a function of the system BIOS in cooperation with the system CPU; as a function of a controller card BIOS in cooperation with a controller microprocessor; or as a function of an IDE BIOS in cooperation with an IDE microprocessor.

Growing community of inventors

Henderson, NV, United States of America

Daniel James Colegrove