Electrical computers and digital processing systems: memory – Storage accessing and control – Memory configuring
Reexamination Certificate
1999-04-26
2002-05-07
Yoo, Do Hyun (Department: 2187)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: memory
Storage accessing and control
Memory configuring
C707S793000, C710S120000, C711S170000, C713S001000, C714S006130
Reexamination Certificate
active
06385711
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to hard disk drives and formatting of hard disk drives, and more particularly, to the formatting of hard disk drives to receive data according to the packet size of an interface.
2. Description of the Related Art
Personal computer systems have attained widespread use. A personal computer system, such as a DELL® personal computer system, can usually be defined as a desktop or portable microcomputer that includes a system unit having a system processor or central processing unit (CPU) with associated memory, a display panel, a keyboard, a hard disk storage device or other type of storage media such as a floppy disk drive or a compact disk read only memory (CD ROM) drive. These personal computer systems are information handling systems which are designed primarily to give independent computing power to a single user or group of users.
A computer system user or computer system manufacturer must format the hard disk storage device for the device to be operable. Generally, formatting a hard disk drive involves low-level formatting, partitioning, and high-level formatting. Low-level formatting involves executing a program associated with the hard-disk controller card and supplying the controller with information concerning the hard disk drive. A hard disk drive may contain one or more disk platters with each disk platter formatted into tracks and sectors. The information transmitted to the controller includes the hard disk drive's number of sectors, and number of data bytes per sector. Typically, the number of tracks on a disk platter can vary from drive to drive, and the size of a sector is typically defined to hold 512 bytes of data.
A hard disk drive normally contains registers for receiving commands from the computer processor, and data registers for storing data to be retrieved by the processor. This interface between the hard disk drive and the processor follows the type of interface requirements of a given standard so that the hard disk drive can be attached to other computer components that also follow that standard. For example, an Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) interface hard disk drive will follow the bus interface requirements defined in the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) ATA standard so that the hard disk drive can be attached to an Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) ATA bus.
When a specification is capable of transmitting a variety of data transmission rates, it is desirable to have a hard disk drive with the ability to take full advantage of the data transmission rates.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, it has been discovered that the data transmission rate of incoming and outgoing data can be advantageously correlated to the size of a data storage area of a medium by formatting the medium with the data storage area into a plurality of sectors according to the data transfer rate of the data. More particularly, a medium can be correlated to a data transmission rate of data by providing a controller to format the medium into a sector size according to a packet size associated with the data transfer rate of the data.
More specifically, an embodiment of the present invention relates to a method of transmitting packet data to and from the medium according to the sector size. The method includes formatting the medium such that the sector size and the packet data size are substantially equivalent. Additionally, the method includes providing a controller with a capability of determining a read/write transmission size, the read/write transmission size correlated to the data transmission rate and the sector size. The controller also has the capability of determining a read/write transmission size according to the formula: R
trans
=(R
HD
, R
data
)
max
This formula provides that the transmission rate realizable by the hard disk drive is a maximum function wherein the transmission rate is the maximum of the rate of the hard disk drive or the data rate.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, a method includes formatting a hard disk drive, wherein the correlating the size of a data storage area on the hard disk drive with a data transfer rate includes correlating sector sizes of the hard disk drive according to a size of data packets to be transferred to the hard disk drive. The method includes providing information regarding the data storage area to a driver for the hard disk drive and providing at least one command indicative of information about the hard disk drive. Such information includes a size to which the data storage area is capable of receiving data. The method also includes providing a controller that receives and transmits the at least one command and installing an operating system capable of operating the driver.
Another embodiment of the present invention relates to a method of formatting a hard disk drive that includes providing an adaptive disk cache, the disk cache adaptively organizing the data into the size of the data storage area. The adaptive disk cache arranges the data for the data storage area such that a plurality of pending data requests can be reordered to complete the pending data requests efficiently.
Another embodiment of the present invention relates to a computer system that includes a processor, a memory coupled to the processor, a bus coupled to both the memory and the processor, a medium having a data storage area, the medium coupled to the bus, and a controller coupled to the bus, the controller capable of correlating the size of the data storage area on the medium with a data transfer rate. The computer system provides that the controller is capable of correlating the size of the data storage area to the data transfer rate for the data. Accordingly, the computer system includes means for determining a data storage capacity of the medium, the data storage capacity including a sector size, and means for formatting the medium into a plurality of sectors according to the data transfer rate of the data. The controller is capable of correlating the size of the data storage area by determining a data storage capacity of the medium, the data storage capacity including a sector size. The controller then formats the medium into a sector size according to a packet size associated with the data transfer rate of the data. The computer system also includes an adaptive cache with the medium, the adaptive cache storing the data on the medium depending on a packet data transfer rate. Accordingly, the controller correlates the size of the data storage area and transmits packet data to and from the medium according to the sector size. In one embodiment, the controller transmits packet data at a data transmission rate according to: R
trans
=(R
HD
, R
data
)
max
.
Another embodiment of the present invention relates to an apparatus comprising a hard disk drive according to the IEEE 1394 Specification with a read and write head within the hard disk drive; a plurality of hard disk platters within the hard disk drive; an index mark placed on at least one of the plurality of hard disk platters; and a plurality of sector marks indicating a position of the read and write head, index mark and the plurality of sector marks indicating a position of the read and write head through a predetermined method at the start of each revolution. The predetermined method includes at least one of: rotational positioning sensing, triangular positioning and the Pythagorean theorem.
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Dell Products L.P.
Namazi Mehdi
Skjerven Morrill & MacPherson LLP
Yoo Do Hyun
LandOfFree
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