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. 05, 2000
Filed:
May. 15, 1998
Merle Eugene Thowe, Yukon, OK (US);
Seagate Technology, Inc., Scotts Valley, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus are disclosed for improving data transfer rate performance in a multi-drive array configured as a redundant array of inexpensive discs (RAID). The array comprises at least first and second disc drives each comprising a rotatable disc on which a plurality of tracks are defined. An array controller is operably coupled to the disc drives to stripe data across the first and second disc drives using a common bus architecture. Logical block addresses (LBAs) are assigned to each of a plurality of data blocks of the tracks of the drives and are grouped into a number of zones, each zone having nominally the same number of LBAs. Data are thereafter transferred to and from the drives on a zone-basis, so that a block of data of determined size is divided between the first and second disc drives at a selected ratio so that a greater percentage of the block of data is written to the first zone as compared to the second zone.