Seagate Technology Incorporated

Western Digital Technologies, Inc.

Edwin Scott Olds

Travis D Fox

Timothy Richard Feldman

Jonathan Williams Haines

Wayne Howard Vinson

Kenny Troy Coker

Mark David Hertz

Stephen R Cornaby

Mark A Thiessen

Jack Allen Mobley

Danny J Kastler

Craig William Miller

Mark A Gaertner

William Bernard Boyle

Shane G Nowell

Steven Scott Williams

Bruce D Emo

Robert Morelli Fallone

James Joseph Touchton

Robert William Dixon

Srinivas Neppalli

Daniel Joseph Coonen

Abbas Ali

David W Wheelock

Dan Joseph Coonen

Philip E Cloud

William B Raspotnik

Kevin S Quillen

Salman A Nawaz

Steven Scott William

Marika Meertens

Embodiments described herein relate to systems and methods for decreasing power consumption of a storage device. More specifically, embodiments disclosed herein are directed to reducing power consumption of a data storage device by enabling a command buffer associated with the data storage device to store received commands without executing the commands until a predetermined number of commands have been stored in the buffer.

Power aware power safe write buffer

Systems, apparatuses, and methods use angular position tracking in mitigating data loss risks stemming from adjacent track interference (ATI), wide area track erasure (WATER), and/or other issues. A storage device includes a rotational magnetic storage medium divided into a group of tracks and a controller communicably coupled to the rotational magnetic storage medium. The controller is configured to: determine, based on an angular position of a write operation within a group of tracks, whether the angular position of the write operation overlaps a previously written area in the group of tracks; in the event the angular position of the write operation overlaps the previously written area in the group of tracks, increment a counter; and in the event the counter exceeds a counter threshold, perform a data loss risk mitigation procedure.

Angular position tracking of data accesses to mitigate risk of data loss

Managing data stored on media of a Data Storage Device (DSD) using zone relocation. At least a portion of the media is logically divided into a plurality of zones and zones are identified with access counts greater than or equal to a threshold. The access count for each of the identified zones indicates a number of times data in the zone has been read or written. Data is relocated from at least one zone of the identified zones to at least one destination zone on the media to reduce a data access time between the identified zones.

Data management for a data storage device with zone relocation

A disk drive is disclosed comprising a disk comprising a plurality of refresh regions, each refresh region comprising a range of logical block addresses (LBAs). The disk drive further comprises a recent write streams list comprising one or more entries, each entry representing an LBA stream. The disk drive further comprises a head actuated radially over the disk to write data to and read data from the disk, and control circuitry coupled to the head, wherein the control circuitry is operable to execute a write command comprising one or more LBAs, determine whether the one or more LBAs are sequential to an entry in the recent write streams list, modify an entry in the recent write streams list when the one or more LBAs are sequential to the entry, and utilize the modified entry to determine whether to reset a refresh counter associated with a refresh region.

Disk drive with recent write streams list for data refresh determination

Adjusting power and/or performance settings of a data storage device (DSD) in a system including the DSD and a host in communication with the DSD. A driver executed on the host defines user settings for the DSD and determines a state of the system. The driver commands the DSD to adjust power and/or performance settings for the DSD based on the state of the system and the user settings.

User controlled data storage device power and performance settings

An array of disk drives is disclosed comprising a controller, a plurality of disk drives, wherein the controller is configured to transmit a first access command out of a group of access commands to a first disk drive in the array; transmit a plurality of the access commands out of the group of access commands to other disk drives in the array; and transmit a completion status to the first disk drive, wherein the completion status identifies a status of the plurality of access commands transmitted to the other disk drives.

Scheduling commands in a dependent array of disk drives

A disk drive is disclosed comprising a head actuated over a disk, wherein a maximum radial movement of the head is limited. A plurality of access commands are stored in a command queue, and an access latency is determined for each command in the command queue, wherein the access latency is based at least on a seek latency for the head and a rotational latency for the disk. The access latency for each access command is increased by an offset based at least on a seek length for each access command, wherein the offset compensates for the limited maximum radial movement of the head. An access command is selected from the command queue based on the increased access latencies, and the selected access command is executed.

Disk drive modifying rotational position optimization algorithm to achieve target performance for limited stroke

A drive is disclosed comprising a head actuated over a disk comprising a plurality of data tracks. A random access write zone is defined on the disk comprising a first plurality of the data tracks, and a circular buffer write zone is defined on the disk comprising a second plurality of the data tracks. Write commands are received comprising logical block addresses (LBAs). First frequency and second frequency write LBAs are identified, where the second frequency is higher than the first frequency. Data associated with the first frequently write LBAs is stored in the circular buffer write zone, and data associated with the second frequency write LBAs is stored in the random access write zone.

Disk drive mapping low frequency write addresses to circular buffer write zone

Multi-resolution cache monitoring devices and methods are provided. Multi-resolution cache devices illustratively have a cache memory, an interface, an information unit, and a processing unit. The interface receives a request for data that may be included in the cache memory. The information unit has state information for the cache memory. The state information is organized in a hierarchical structure. The process unit searches the hierarchical structure for the requested data.

Multi-resolution cache monitoring

A disk drive is disclosed comprising a head actuated over a disk. The disk drive receives a plurality of access commands including a first access command out of a group G of access commands. The access commands are stored in a command queue. A completion status is received for a number of access commands out of the G access commands that are assigned to other disk drives, and the first access command is selected from the command queue based on the completion status.

The disclosure is related to systems and methods of dynamic dataflow in a multiple cache architecture. In an embodiment, a system having a data storage device with a multiple cache architecture may detect at least one attribute affecting a data storage workload or data storage performance. The system may select at least one of a plurality of data flow schemes based on the at least one attribute, which may be done to optimize the data storage workload for various conditions. In another embodiment, a data storage controller may automatically and dynamically select one of multiple data flow schemes within a data storage device having a multiple cache architecture. The data storage controller may monitor attributes to determine which data flow scheme to select for various workloads of the data storage device.

Dynamic data flow management in a multiple cache architecture

A method for determining an aging period for retaining a write-back data in a cache memory prior to writing the write-back data to a storage media is determined through use of a write-back aging routine. The aging period is based on a proportional utilization level of the cache memory by the write-back data, the higher the memory utilization level, the shorter the period for aging the write-back data. The aging period takes a form of an aging threshold, which differs depending on the memory utilization level, i.e., the amount of cache memory utilized by the write-back data. The method includes, identifying the memory utilization level, selecting the data aging threshold based on the memory utilization level; and writing the data from the cache memory to the storage media when an age of the data in the memory exceeds the selected data aging threshold.

Adaptive resource controlled write-back aging for a data storage device

A unique system and method for ordering commands may reduce disc access latency while giving preference to pending commands. The method and system involves giving preference to pending commands in a set of priority queues. The method and system involve identifying a pending command and processing other non-pending commands in route to the pending command if performance will not be penalized in doing so. The method and system include a list of command node references referring to a list of sorted command nodes that are to be scheduled for processing.

Prioritizing commands in a data storage device

Systems and methods of monitoring logical block address (LBA) activity are disclosed. In an embodiment, a pattern of a data storage device may be monitored. An LBA may be detected that is accessed based on the pattern. The LBA may be added to a list of LBAs stored in a memory.

System and method of monitoring data storage activity

Method and apparatus for using block level quality of service (QOS) data in a data storage device. A memory space is provided with a plurality of physical data storage blocks, such as data sectors on a magnetic disc. The QOS data identify at least one QOS characteristic for each of the available blocks. Transfers of user data between the blocks and a host device are preferably carried out in relation to the QOS data. In some preferred embodiments, the QOS data identifies a certification state for each of the blocks. In this way, the device is manufactured with less than all of the blocks having been successfully certified, and the remaining blocks are certified by the device during field use. In other preferred embodiments, the QOS data include a virus scan status, an access history, a write status, or an overlapped track indication for each said block.

Growing community of inventors

Fort Collins, CO, United States of America

Edwin Scott Olds