Automatic adjustment of disk space required for suspend-to-disk operation

Abstract

Method and apparatus for implementing S2D functions using a dedicated S2D partition of a fixed, minimum size, in combination with an extended partition of adjustable size are disclosed. In a preferred embodiment, a hierarchy of pointers is constructed for indicating the location of the blocks of disk space comprising the extended partition, which may be located in a native OS partition of the hard disk, some other available space on the hard disk, or both, and may or may not comprise contiguous hard disk space. A root block stored in the S2D partition comprises a plurality of pointers, each of which indicate the location of a pointer block. Each pointer block comprises a plurality of pointers, each of which point to a data block. When an S2D operation is initiated, an S2D utility continuously locates a next available data block in the S2D partition or extended partition, using the entries in the root block and pointer blocks, and writes a portion of RAM to the located block until the entire RAM is saved to the hard disk. Upon returning from the S2D operation, the process is performed in reverse. In one aspect of the invention, an MKS2D utility fills in the root and pointer blocks and reserves the data blocks for use by the S2D utility. In another aspect of the invention, an RMS2D utility deletes the extended partition and returns the data blocks previously allocated thereto to the native OS and/or other partition(s).