Electrical computers and digital processing systems: memory – Storage accessing and control – Memory configuring
Reexamination Certificate
1999-03-30
2001-02-20
Lane, Jack A. (Department: 2751)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: memory
Storage accessing and control
Memory configuring
C707S793000, C713S002000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06192456
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to computer systems and associated hardware, and particularly to methods and apparatuses for creating formatted FAT partitions on a computer readable medium of a hard drive having a BIOS-less controller.
2. Description of the Related Art
A computer system
10
, such as shown in
FIG. 1
, can store and retrieve data from computer readable media in various forms such as magnetic disks, magnetic tapes, and the like. To do so, the computer system
10
can include or be connected to a media drive which physically interacts with the medium
12
and translates data between the computer system and the medium. Such a media drive can be a hard drive, a tape drive, a floppy disk drive, a CD drive, etc. The media drive can be internal to the computer system or can be an external peripheral device
14
that is connected to the computer system as shown in FIG.
1
.
To facilitate communication between the computer system
10
and the peripheral device
14
, the computer system
10
includes a controller card
16
which is connected to a central processing unit (CPU)
18
of the computer system
10
through a bus
20
. To utilize the computer system
10
, an operating system (OS), such as Windows 95™ or DOS™, is run by the CPU
18
. The controller card
16
enables communication between the peripheral device
14
and the OS via a communication protocol such as EIDE on SCSI. As shown in
FIG. 2A
, the controller card
16
includes a controller
22
connected to an option read-only-memory (ROM)
24
. The controller
22
enables communication between the peripheral device
14
and the OS via a communication protocol such as EIDE on SCSI. As is well known, the option ROM
24
contains code in the form of a BIOS that enables the OS to identify the type of controller
16
connected to the computer system
10
and the type of peripheral devices
14
connected to the controller card
16
. Thus, when a controller card
16
has an option ROM
24
, it can be recognized during bootup and therefore can function as a boot device. Alternatively, a controller card such as controller card
16
′ of
FIG. 2B
can include a controller
22
without an option ROM
24
.
FIG. 3
is a schematic of data storage space
26
of a computer readable medium, such as a disk of a hard disk drive. Also noted is the type of data that can be resident on a partitioned and formatted disk. A master boot record (MBR) can begin at the beginning of the data storage space
27
. Included in the master boot record MBR is data which identifies the beginning location, also sometimes referred to as the location of other partitions on the disk. For example, the respective locations
28
and
29
of a primary partition D:, and a first extended partition P1 can be included. The primary partition D: is a file allocation table (FAT) partition which includes a boot sector
30
made up of multiple variables which describe the data structure of the primary partition D:. The primary partition D: also includes reserved data storage space
31
which is made available for future data.
The first extended partition P1 includes a first partition boot record PBR-1 which contains respective locations
32
and
33
of a first logical drive E:. Also shown is a second extended partition P2. The first logical drive E: also is a FAT partition and includes a boot sector
34
which performs the same function for the first logical drive E: as the boot sector
30
does for the primary partition D:. Also as does the primary partition D:, the first logical drive E: includes reserved data storage space
35
which is made available for future data. The second extended partition P2 includes a second partition boot record PBR-2 that can contain further locations of other logical drives or other extended partitions. Of course, the remainder of the data storage space
26
can also include other extended partitions with other partition boot records and other logical drives with other boot sectors and other reserved data storage space. Also, between the master boot record MBR and the disk partitions, as well as between each partition, is included unused data storage space
36
.
To facilitate data location on the disk, the above locations are described in two different coordinate systems. In a first coordinate system, a cylinder-head-sector (CHS) location is given as three coordinates which describe the location of a sector relative to other sectors in the same head, sometimes referred to as a track of the disk. Further, this describes the location of a head relative to other heads on the disk, and the location of the cylinder relative to other cylinders on the disk. In contrast, the second coordinate system provides a logical block address (LBA) for a sector, which is an absolute location on the disk. For example, the master boot record MBR has a cylinder-head-sector (CHS) location of 0,0,1 which corresponds to an LBA location of 0. In general, these systems are used to create and format partitions on the disk as described in more detail below.
FIG. 4
is a process diagram for a method
40
of creating formatted partitions on a computer readable medium such as a disk, according to the prior art. In operation
42
the sizes of the partitions are input while in operation
44
the types of these partitions are input. For example, the sizes of the partitions and the types of partitions can be input by a user of the computer system
10
. In operation
46
the partitions are created on the disk. In operation
48
the computer system is rebooted, and the disk is formatted in operation
50
. With operating systems such as Windows 95™ and DOS™, operations
42
,
44
, and
46
can be performed using program instructions referred to as FDISK operations, while operation
50
can be performed using program instructions referred to as FORMAT.
FIG. 5
is a process diagram further detailing the operations of operation
46
of FIG.
4
. In operation
52
the master boot record (MBR) is populated with data including the CHS location and LBA of the various boot sectors of the partitions. In operation
54
, each of the boot sectors of each of the partitions are populated with the value “F6” for substantially all of the variables.
FIG. 6
depicts a process diagram further outlining the operations of operation
50
in FIG.
4
. The user selects the partitions to be formatted in operation
56
. Once the partitions to be formatted have been selected, the process advances to write full boot sector data at CHS or LBA locations. Typically, this formatting operation is performed using a Microsoft Windows formatting tool.
Unfortunately, when the above method is practiced with an operating system such as Windows 95™ or DOS™, the use of the CHS location to write the boot sector data can result in the misplacement of some boot sectors on the disk. In particular, a boot sector, that is desired to be located beyond the first gigabyte of a disk having a data storage space of greater than one gigabyte, may be incorrectly placed within the first gigabyte of the data storage space. This is exemplified in
FIG. 7
schematically depicting a data storage space
70
of two gigabytes (2 GB). Here, the first and second sectors BOOT
1
and BOOT
2
are desired to be, and have been, placed within the first gigabyte of the data storage space
70
. A third boot sector BOOT
3
is desire to be located in the third boot sector location
72
which is beyond the first gigabyte of the data storage space
70
.
However, this can be performed improperly in the case of an operating system which uses the operations of
FIGS. 4 through 6
, such that the full boot sector data is written at the CHS. Specifically, the third boot sector BOOT
3
is undesirably placed at a location
74
within the first gigabyte of the data storage pace
70
. In the case shown in
FIG. 7
, the third boot sector BOOT
3
is therefore within the portion of the data storage space allocated to the partition associated with the first boot sector BOOT
1
. Therefore,
Bui Thanh Tu
Lin Yen-Chung
Adaptec, Inc.
Lane Jack A.
Martine Penilla & Kim LLP
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