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:
Sep. 28, 1999
Filed:
Jun. 03, 1997
Ishai Kedem, Brookline, MA (US);
EMC Corporation, Hopkinton, MA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus provide for maintenance and on-line scanning of the mass storage elements of a computer system without taking those elements off-line. Maintenance commands are sent to the disk drive elements during those time intervals when they are less busy with commands from the host computer(s). In a special instance, a SCSI code load update command can be implemented and forwarded to one or more disk drives connected over a SCSI bus to a disk drive controller. The disk drive controller returns busy signals to any incoming read operations. In a particular instance where there are mirrored drives, read operations can be redirected to a mirrored drive which is not being updated. The host computer system provides substantially no change in throughput performance as the maintenance operations occur.