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:
Mar. 04, 2008
Filed:
Apr. 09, 2004
Todd R. Martin, Austin, TX (US);
Todd R. Martin, Austin, TX (US);
Dell Products L.P., Round Rock, TX (US);
Abstract
A method, computer system, and apparatus perform an expedited boot and operating system load operation from a hard drive device. Rather than waiting for storage media in a storage device to be fully operational before retrieving software modules and/or data required for initial loading of an operating system, the software modules and/or data are stored in a non-volatile memory in the storage device and are immediately available to the central processing unit. When the busy bit in a drive status register is set by the hard drive microcontroller, the BIOS code attempts to retrieve the requested data from a non-volatile memory in the hard drive, such as a non-volatile cache memory which may be configured to provide coherent data storage, even across a power loss to the hard drive.