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:
May. 20, 2003
Filed:
May. 23, 2001
Robert W. Horst, Saratoga, CA (US);
Christophe Therene, Livermore, CA (US);
3ware, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A disk array controller reliably improves performance in RAID configurations without the need for a battery backup. Write completion interrupts are queued until a write cache flush has been performed and are then sent to a host system. States of ranges of disk addresses (activity bins) are stored in nonvolatile storage elements associated with the ranges. The states allow rebuild times to be reduced after power failures and drive failures. A range is in a Changing state if at least one of the addresses is the target of a write operation that has been initiated but not completed. The range is in a Stable state if no addresses are the target of an uncompleted write operation. Two additional states are used to identify ranges of disk addresses that have been zeroed or never been written to. The additional states allow substantial reductions in RAID volume creation times.