Seagate Technology Incorporated

EngKuan Ooi

YongPeng Chng

Wesley Chan

Patrick TaiHeng Wong

Kareen C Ee

A disc drive storage system and device for use with a host computer is provided in which information contained on the disc drive can be write protected with an ATA compatible write protection scheme. The system includes at least one rotatable disc having a disc surface with a plurality of physical memory locations referenced by the host computer through logical block addresses. The physical memory locations include data storage locations and attribute storage locations that store protection status information corresponding to the data storage locations. A disc controller receives write protection commands that are compatible with an ATA data exchange protocol from the host. These write protection commands relate to the write protection status information of at least one logical block address. The controller executes the write protection commands to thereby implement a write protection scheme compatible with the ATA data exchange protocol.

Growing community of inventors

Singapore, Singapore

EngKuan Ooi