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:
Dec. 02, 2008
Filed:
May. 03, 2005
Thomas Richard Forrer, Jr., Round Rock, TX (US);
Jason Eric Moore, Austin, TX (US);
Asghar Tavasoli, Austin, TX (US);
Abel Enrique Zuzuarregui, Paige, TX (US);
Thomas Richard Forrer, Jr., Round Rock, TX (US);
Jason Eric Moore, Austin, TX (US);
Asghar Tavasoli, Austin, TX (US);
Abel Enrique Zuzuarregui, Paige, TX (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus is provided for allocating a portion of the OD zone of a hard drive disk to be a non-volatile (NV) caching space, where all writes to the disk are carried out. These write operations can be performed much faster than with conventional techniques, and storage costs may be significantly reduced. The disk drive controller manages the cache, and the host system sees improved throughput, especially for write intensive operations. In one embodiment a method is provided for writing specified data to a disk drive in a computer configuration, the disk drive having a magnetic disk and a volatile cache memory. A specified portion of the OD zone of the disk is reserved for an NV cache space, and the specified data is initially stored in the volatile memory, in response to a write command. The method further includes writing the specified data from the volatile memory to the NV cache space at the disk OD, and subsequently writing the specified data from the NV cache space to a selected longer-term storage location on the disk.