Denso Corporation

Nobuya Uematsu

Tsuneo Yamamoto

Yasushi Kanda

Takeshi Asai

A storage apparatus includes a flash memory that includes multiple blocks; and a control portion that reads data written in the block and writes the data into the block. The flash memory includes one block set having n pieces of the blocks including BRto BR. A write data and a write flag are capable of being written into each of blocks BR, the write data being written in accordance with a request, the write flag indicating that the write data has been written into a target block BR. In accordance with a write request, the control portion performs an erasure process, a first write process, and a second write process. The erasure process erases the data including the write data and the write flag. The first write process writes the new write data into the block BR. The second write process writes the write flag into a block BR.

Storage apparatus, flash memory control apparatus, and program

To record data in a flash memory, upon detecting that a current destination memory block is full, a control apparatus records data in a destination memory block one block by one block, with 'in-advance' data erasure of the next memory block and by determining if data erasure of the next memory block is successful. When data erasure of the next memory block fails, such memory block is designated as broken, and such memory block is excluded from a group of blocks to be used as recording destination. After determining the data erasure result of a yet-next memory block is successful, the required data is copied to the yet-next memory block. Therefore, even when one of the blocks is broken, a sequential data recording in the flash memory is performed without increasing the number of data copy operations between blocks.

Growing community of inventors

Kariya, Japan

Nobuya Uematsu