Fujitsu Corporation

Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Toshiba Storage Device Corporation

Keiichi Yorimitsu

Sawao Iwatani

Tatsuo Matoba

Yasuyuki Nagashima

Hironori Kanno

Michio Yamamoto

Seiji Toda

Takuya Kurihara

Tatsuhiko Machida

Kotaro Yamamoto

Satoshi Yazawa

Sanae Kamakura

Tetsuo Kuribayashi

Takumi Kakuya

Hirofumi Morita

Nobuhiro Sugawara

Kiyotaka Sasaki

Masami Tashiro

Kenji Inoue

Masahide Kanegae

Suijin Taketa

Yasuyoshi Sugesawa

Yuuichi Tarouda

According to one embodiment, there is provided a magnetic disk device including a magnetic disk, a storage unit, and a control unit. The magnetic disk includes a recording region. The storage unit is configured to store a value according to number of accesses to each of a plurality of regions obtained by dividing of the recording region of the magnetic disk in association with each of the plurality of regions. The control unit is configured to count a value according to the number of accesses to each of a plurality of regions in a count step unit that is a value determined according to an elapsed time from occurrence of a specific situation and is a value counted per unit access, and to update the value stored in the storage unit.

Magnetic disk device

According to one embodiment, a drive array apparatus includes a plurality of data storage drives constituting a drive array and a controller. The controller divides all data storage areas of each of the data storage drives into a plurality of logical unit areas and associates and manages each of the logical unit areas and each of the data storage drives. The controller identifies a logical unit area of an error occurrence object based on a notification from a data storage drive where an error occurred, restores data of the identified logical unit area, and performs reconfiguration processing of the drive array.

Drive array apparatus, controller, data storage apparatus and method for rebuilding drive array

A program processing device has a non-volatile storage, a volatile storage and a controller. The controller has a detector that detects a bit flip in the program, the variable data, and the constant data in the volatile storage, a constant recovery unit that, when the detector detects an error in the constant data, writes the constant data in the non-volatile storage into the volatile storage, and then continues the execution of the program from a point at which the program was being executed before the detector detected the error, and a restart that, when the detector detects an error in one of the variable data and the program, writes the program, the initial value of the variable data, and the constant data in the non-volatile storage into the volatile storage, and then executes the program written into the volatile storage from a beginning of the program.

Program processing device and program processing method

To provide a medium scan method which can be executed for a suitable region at suitable timing, a disk device comprises a storage medium for storing information, a writing unit for writing information to the storage medium by request from an upper device such as a host computer or the like, a medium monitoring unit for monitoring the state of the storage medium, and a medium scan determining unit for determining whether or not to require medium scan for the storage medium.

Medium scan method for use in disk device

An information storage apparatus that adjusts to different recording densities of a recording medium. The information storage apparatus includes a flash ROM that stores a plurality of control parameters corresponding to different recording densities, and a micro-controller unit (MCU) that sets one control parameter among the plurality of control parameters stored in the flash ROM, determines whether the set control parameter is suitable for reading data from the recording medium, and selects the control parameter determined to be suitable.

Information storage apparatus and method of controlling the same

A disc array device for maintaining consistency of data. When write processing is interrupted and then restarted, new data may be stored in a nonvolatile memory and regeneration of parity may be impossible because data can not be read out normally from a disc device other than a disc device in which new data is to be written and a disk device for parity. In such a case, a special write executing unit overwrites the new data stored in the nonvolatile memory at a specified write position of the disk device in which new data is to be written.

Disk array device

A I/O controller which is connected to a plurality of I/O units and one spare I/O unit, controls a plurality of I/O units based on a command from a master unit, and allows a spare I/O unit to be used in place of an I/O unit where an abnormality is found, when an abnormality is found in any of a plurality of I/O units. This I/O controller gives a decision about normality at a time interval not in use for an operation when no command from a master unit (,) is being processed, after selecting I/O units (,) or a spare I/O unit (,). When it gives a decision of abnormality, the controller stores information about the abnormality in preventive maintenance information storage register (,) as preventive maintenance information.

Input/output controller providing preventive maintenance information regarding a spare I/O unit

Modern disk array apparatus are capable of providing a plurality of logical disks within one cabinet. The present invention provides a disk array apparatus in which logical disks can be easily re-arranged within the array, or added to the array. An array controller logically controls at least one disk apparatus as one logical disk. The array controller also changes positional information within the drive modules stored within the disk apparatus. Information is matched indicating the position of the relevant disk apparatus within the logical disk. Therefore, after transposition of a particular logical disk, a new logical disk can be accurately recognized.

Methods and apparatus for re-arranging logical drives in a disk array apparatus

A command execution monitoring system includes a first unit which retains control parameters of an operation control command sent by one of host computers, the control parameters including an operation completion time. A second unit sequentially receives command entries sent for input/output devices by the host computers and retains the command entries in a table, each entry including a relative elapsed time measured from a time the entry is retained in the table. A third unit sets a time-out period of one of the host computers at the operation completion time retained by the first unit, so that execution of each of the entries in the table of the second unit is monitored based on a comparison between each of the relative elapsed times of the entries and the operation completion time.

System for monitoring execution of commands from a host for shared I/O devices by setting a time-out period based on control parameters sent by the host

The spare disk unit existing in the port other than the parity group to which a failure disk unit in a disk array belongs is most preferentially selected as an alternative destination and data is reconstructed. When a system is made operative, the spare disk unit is allocated to a different port position every rank and the spare disk unit belonging to the rank of the failure disk unit is most preferentially selected as an alternative destination. Due to this, the selection of the alternative destination by the spare disk unit is optimized and the deterioration of performance in data reconstruction is prevented.

Method and apparatus for taking countermeasure for failure of disk array

In a disk array device, a logical device is defined by a plurality of hard disk drives, with the logical device formed by different types of hard disk drives. A logical device setting unit divides the storage area of each of the hard disk drives into parts and performs striping for the divided storage areas of the disk drives. Hence, a logical device can be defined taking into account the capacities of the hard disk drives and can be formed by using hard disk drives of different types.

Disk array device which separates local and physical disks using

A disk cache operation which was optimized so as to adapted to an operation form of the user and a disk array is executed. A cache mechanism is provided for each of two sets of controllers and can be made operative in either one of the reliability significance mode for storing the same data into each system, the performance significance mode for independently storing data every system, and the average mode of both of said modes. A cache process in which a disk array which operates in RAID0, RAID1, RAID3, or RAID5 is set to a target is efficiently executed. Effective data is prepared on a cache block so as to enable an access like RAID3 such that a parity can be calculated without needing to read the disk even in the operation of RAID5.

disk apparatus with multiple raid operating modes

A I/O controller which is connected to a plurality of I/O units and one spare I/O unit, controls a plurality of I/O units based on a command from a master unit, and allows a spare I/O unit to be used in place of an I/O unit where an abnormality is found, when an abnormality is found in any of a plurality of I/O units. This I/O controller gives a decision about normality at a time interval not in use for an operation when no command from a master unit (10) is being processed, after selecting I/O units (30) or a spare I/O unit (31). When it gives a decision of abnormality, the controller stores information about the abnormality in preventive maintenance information storage register (25) as preventive maintenance information.

Input/output controller providing preventive maintenance information

Disk cache apparatus having selectable performance modes

A process control system for activating a storage device e.g., disk array device including a plurality of disk drive and control units for operating the disk drives in parallel, executes a background processing while a process for activating the disk array device is being executed. Preferably, when the disk array device is powered on, the apparatus carries out a diagnosis in the respective control units, and applies a locating process to the respective disk drives so as to detect a defective disk drive. If defect is detected, data stored in the defective disk drive is reconstructed in a spare disk drive.

Growing community of inventors

Yokohama, Japan

Keiichi Yorimitsu