Seagate Technology Incorporated

Conner Peripherals, Inc.

Nstor Corporation

Nstor Technologies, Inc.

Guy A Carbonneau

Bernie Wu

Larry G Kibler

Tim Jones

Thomas Pisello

A disk drive storage enclosure includes one cooling path for storage media and a separate cooling path for non-drive storage support equipment such as controller hardware, power supplies, circuit memory, processors, etc. Within the enclosure, storage media are stored up front, with non-drive storage support equipment stored at rear. The storage media and non-drive equipment are separated by a central ventilating chamber. In one cooling path, intake air enters the storage media from the enclosure's front face, then passes into the central ventilating chamber before exhausting through the chamber's side wall. A separate cooling path serves the non-drive storage support equipment. In this path, intake air passes laterally through the non-drive storage support equipment. The cooling paths are driven by fan assemblies, which may include redundant fan units with shutoff gates that are automatically activated if a fan unit fails to prevent back flow.

Disk drive storage enclosure with isolated cooling path for storage media

An adjustable system for mounting data storage chassis allows chassis of differing depths to be mounted to a single set of rack mount posts. The front face of the chassis is attached to two front posts. One or more rails are then slidably inserted into the chassis and attached a corresponding number of rear posts. In one embodiment, two narrow, elongated rails are slidably adjusted into guide paths each comprising two, open and opposing brackets affixed internally to the chassis. The rails are then attached to two corresponding rear posts. In another embodiment, a single, wide rail is slidably adjusted into a single guide path at the bottom of the chassis and is then attached to one of the rear posts.

Data storage chassis with adjustable rack mounting

Front bezel for disk drive storage enclosure

An intelligent status monitoring, reporting and control module is coupled to a SCSI bus that interconnects a cluster of SCSI-compatible data storage modules (e.g., magnetic disk drives). The status monitoring, reporting and control module is otherwise coupled to the cluster of SCSI-compatible data storage modules and to power maintenance and/or other maintenance subsystems of the cluster for monitoring and controlling states of the data storage modules and power maintenance and/or other maintenance subsystems that are not readily monitored or controlled directly by way of the SCSI bus. The status monitoring, reporting and control module sends status reports to a local or remote system supervisor and executes control commands supplied by the local or remote system supervisor. The status reports include reports about system temperature and power conditions. The executable commands include commands for regulating system temperature and power conditions.

SCSI-coupled module for monitoring and controlling SCSI-coupled raid

A method and apparatus for interfacing a SCSI device directly to an Ethernet network utilizes a single board converter for translating information packets in Ethernet format to a SCSI format. In reverse, the same converter translates information from a SCSI device into a format suitable for transmission on an Ethernet bus. The method defines a procedure for receiving, recognizing and translating data bi-directionally between the bus and the SCSI device.

Growing community of inventors

Winter Springs, FL, United States of America

Guy A Carbonneau