Compaq Computer Corporation, Inc.

Hewlett-packard Development Company, L.P.

Compaq Information Technologies Group, L.p.

Steven E Fairchild

John M Hemphill

James A Rozzi

Richard J Tomaszewski

Richard A Stupek, Jr

Benny J Klingsporn

Mark T Lundgreen

Michael R Geroche

A disk drive system including one or more platters, each platter supporting at least one recording surface, where the platters are aligned about a common central axis. The platters spin about the common central axis. A recording head is associated with each recording surface. An actuator mechanism couples to each recording head to move the recording head into proximity with selected portions of the recording surface in response to received commands. At least two replicates of data are stored in at least two data storage areas such that any one of the at least two replicates can be accessed to service a data access request.

Self-mirroring high performance disk drive

A system and method for performing write operations in a disk drive having a write stack drive is disclosed. The disk drive has two drives, a normal drive and a write stack drive. The write stack receives a write command from an array controller and performs write stack operations to store data from the write operations of the write command. The write stack drive includes a non-volatile stack cache memory comprising tracks to store the data. A metadata file identifies the current data stored within the write stack drive. The normal drive then executes the write operations of the write command.

System and method for performing write operations in a disk drive using a write stack drive

An active self discovery system and method for a network. The network includes a management server having a corresponding server address and one or more managed devices. The management server includes a management database that is used to store management information and corresponding network addresses for each of the managed devices. Each managed device includes an active discovery agent that initiates management by sending its management information and network address to the management server. The managed device sends its management information upon initialization or anytime after the device becomes active on the network. Also, the managed device sends updated management information to the management server if and when the management information changes. Such changes include any status or configuration changes of the managed device or a new network address if the device's address is dynamically changed. Communication may be according to HTTP, where the management information is sent using HTTP post transactions. The HTTP post transactions may comprise HTML forms field formatted data and/or a tagged entity body with a MIME descriptor.

Active self discovery of devices that participate in a network

A network including one or more network subnets, a plurality of network participating devices (NPDs) and at least one management server. Each NPD initializes, gathers its status information and sends an initial beacon packet on each subnet to which it is coupled. The beacon packets are preferably confined to the subnet and are not copied to other subnets. For each subnet, each NPD collects beacon packets sent by other NPDs on the same subnet and stores the status information into a local status database including consolidated state information of all the NPDs in the group. For each subnet, each NPD periodically sends subsequent beacon packets with its status information so that all of the active NPDs have the most recent status information for all other NPDs of the same subnet. For each subnet, each NPD examines its configuration and determines whether it can serve as a group master. If a NPD can serve as master, it periodically determines whether it is ASC group master of each subnet to which it is coupled using the same criterion as the other NPD(s) on the same subnet. The same criterion is used to ensure a single master, so that only one ASC group master is selected for each group or subnet.

Automatic state consolidation for network participating devices

A dynamic proxy server (DPS) including client logic that is capable of communicating with a plurality of other server modules via corresponding internal HTTP ports, proxy logic that is capable of communicating with the other server modules via the client logic, and server logic including a communication socket. The server logic attempts to bind its socket to a master TCP port, and if successful, operates to proxy communications between the other server modules and the master port via the proxy logic. If the attempt to bind the socket to the master port is unsuccessful, the server logic binds the socket to one of a plurality of internal ports. The DPS interfaces a functional processing component (FPC) to form a dynamic processing module (DPM). In a system including a plurality of DPMs, one DPM serves as master and the other DPMs serve as secondary DPMs. Each DPM is capable of operating as master and includes watchdog logic that periodically causes the server logic to attempt to bind to the master port. In this manner, if the master DPM drops out, a first one of the other DPMs bind to the master port and operates as the master DPM.

Dynamic proxy server

An event notification system for a network including a managed device that includes one or more management agents that detect one or more management events of a plurality of possible management events. The managed device further includes event notification logic that generates an event notification message (ENM) which includes event related information. The ENM is written using a markup language, such as XML, to encode the event related information based on the management event. The ENM may include executable code written in a scripting language or the like, that when executed, causes at least one action to be performed. A management server is provided that includes an event processor that executes the code to perform the desired actions in response to the particular management event. The event related information may further include a URL to locate one or more information files in the network that provides further information about the management event. The event notification logic transmits the ENM to the management server using an HTTP post transaction to ensure delivery.

Management event notification system using event notification messages

A dynamic testing method for determining disk drive error rates based on the number of bytes which are read from a hard disk drive during test. The method identifies specific faulting disk sectors and disk error types and maintains a log of the errors. The method also accumulates the total number of bytes which have been read from the disk and determines whether the disk under test has exceeded acceptable error rates based on the number of bytes read during the test. This permits the method to identify a disk drive as having failed its test prior to completion of the full disk drive test cycle.

Growing community of inventors

Harris County, TX, United States of America

Steven E Fairchild