Lexmark International, Inc.

Howard Charles Cochran

Bryan Scott Willett

David Keith Lane

Robert Jerome Borchers

Michael James Klein

Steven Lane Duncan

Erik Nils Ackerman

Methods and apparatus teach wear leveling non-volatile memory and secure erasure of data. A computing device receives data to be stored. The data is encrypted, including generation of encryption/decryption key(s). The key(s) are stored in either non-volatile or volatile memory according to a plurality of classification schemes. In a first scheme, key(s) are stored in non-volatile memory and will be retained in the event of a power cycle of the computing device. Otherwise, key(s) stored in volatile memory will be lost upon a power cycle. Upon issuance of a key destruction command, key(s) in the non-volatile memory are sanitized or erased, but the underlying encrypted data need not be erased since no key(s) exist that can recover original content. These techniques limit erasure commands to the non-volatile memory which prolongs its service life. Further embodiments note techniques in imaging devices conducting imaging operations, such as printing or scanning.

Imaging device including wear leveling for non-volatile memory and secure erase of data

A printer is provided which has a special Emulation Manager function as well as a &ldquo;code sniffer&rdquo; function, in which print data received is sent to a code sniffer buffer. A code sniffer function automatically determines the type of emulator that should be called to perform the interpretation or rendering of this print job, and if the code sniffer determines that the correct emulator is PostScript, then the code sniffer scans the data for any &ldquo;special tokens.&rdquo; If a special token is found, the PostScript emulator determines if the special token string data is part of a PostScript comment. If it is in the correct format, then the PostScript emulator sets the &ldquo;mode flag&rdquo; to the &ldquo;MacBinary&rdquo; state, and the code sniffer ceases any further filtering of control characters and disables any change of emulator command that may be received during this print job. The rest of the print job is then interpreted as RAW binary data by the PostScript emulator, until a &ldquo;UEL&rdquo; string is encountered.

Method for automatically detecting and processing binary postscript print jobs

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Lexington, KY, United States of America

Howard Charles Cochran