The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 03, 1998
Filed:
Apr. 24, 1997
Jonathan Miles Marshall, Christchurch, NZ;
Charles David Manning, Christchurch, NZ;
Trimble Navigation Limited, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
A flash memory using branded sectors for managing data files. The flash memory is divided into separately erasable blocks where each block may only be erased in its entirety. Each erasable block includes several file sectors, a sector allocation table (SAT) including an SAT record for each file sector, and a block information record (BIR) including status and an erasure count for the block. Each file sector may be designated as a file data sector, a file header sector, or block erasure sector. The data sectors include a data segment of one of the data files and is branded by a file identification and a sequence number. The brand and the size of the file sectors are used for locating the data sector for accessing the data segment. In order to prevent data from being lost during an update or a consolidation, each SAT record includes a pre-discard indicator for indicating when the associated data sector is being modified or consolidated and a discard indicator for indicating that the modification or consolidation has been completed. In order to prevent block information from being lost during an erasure, the block erasure sector includes the status and erasure counts for each of the erasure blocks.