Dynamic information storage or retrieval – Storage medium structure – Optical track structure
Reexamination Certificate
1998-05-27
2001-01-09
Dinh, Tan (Department: 2752)
Dynamic information storage or retrieval
Storage medium structure
Optical track structure
Reexamination Certificate
active
06172961
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an information recording/reproducing optical disk for recording/reproducing information on/from a sector arranged along a spiral track as an information unit, and an information recording/reproducing device using this disk.
A commercially available, rewritable optical disk for recording/reproducing information includes a magneto-optical disk having 120 or 90 mm in diameter and a phase transition disk (PD) having 120 mm in diameter.
On these disks, a guide groove for guiding a laser beam radiation is formed. Diffraction of the laser beam by the guide groove is used to carry out tracking. This guide groove is formed in a continuous spiral form from the inner peripheral portion of the disk toward the outer peripheral portion thereof. The guide groove is simply called a “groove” and the portion which is not the guide groove is called a “land”. In the prior optical disk, information is recorded on either one of the groove or land.
Information on such an optical disk is read and recorded, for example, by unit of 512 bytes or 2048 bytes. The information unit of a group of such bytes is called a “sector”. Sector addresses which indicate respective addresses of the sectors are assigned to the sectors, respectively. In order to record information on a target address and reproduce the information with high reliability, the sectors are formatted in accordance with a specified sector format. In formatting, information on the sector address is recorded by forming a recess called a pit at the head of each of the sectors. The section at which the sector address information is recorded is called a “header”. As described above, in the prior optical disk, information is recorded on either one of the groove or the land (i.e., groove recording or land recording). As a result, the header is also arranged at only the groove in the case of the groove recording, and at only the land in the case of the land recording.
If information is recorded on both of the land and the groove, which is different from the prior optical disk, it can be easily expected that more recording capacity can be realized.
However, a subject for making it possible to record information on both the land and groove is a method for forming sector addresses. Details thereof will be described below.
In the above-described prior optical disk on which the spiral groove is formed, the groove and the land are formed in parallel. The groove and the land are spiral tracks which can be traced in parallel. In other words, a spiral track of each of the groove and the land is formed on the disk. Thus, the structure of the prior optical disk is referred to as a “double spiral structure”.
Since the groove and the land are formed in parallel in the double spiral structure, track jump is indispensable in shift from the groove to the land. Therefore, when recording/reproducing information on/from the groove is switched to recording/reproducing information on/from the land or vice versa, track jump or seeking is necessary so that successive record or reproduction of the information is difficult.
In order to format a disk having this double spiral structure, there is only a method of formatting sectors on the groove (called “groove sectors” hereinafter) and sectors on the land (called “land sectors” hereinafter) separately. This results in an inconvenience, for example when the disk is formatted so as to record/reproduce information alternately, in a zone CAV manner, on/from the groove and land which are adjacent to each other.
Specifically, in order that the adjacent land and groove have successive sector addresses, it is necessary to format only the groove and format only the land, while assigning intermittent addresses every track cycle. In this case, difficult is the formatting for performing position-matching accurately at the connecting points where addresses are successive from the land to the groove or vice versa. If, in recording/reproducing information, the shift from the land to the groove or from the groove to the land is not smoothly performed, the wait for rotation of the disk is unavoidable so that continuous record/reproduction of the information is obstructed.
In order to overcome these problems, an object of the present invention is to provide an information recording/reproducing optical disk having large recording capacity and a high speed access and making it possible to record and reproduce successive information with high reliability.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an information recording/reproducing device for precisely recording/reproducing information on/from such an optical disk at a high speed.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
To accomplish the objects, an information recording/reproducing optical disk and an information recording/reproducing device according to the present invention has a structure as follows.
The information recording/reproducing optical disk comprises:
a predetermined number of land sectors arranged along one spiral track, each land sector comprising a first recording portion which is an area having a land shape in which data are recorded/reproduced and which is arranged on the spiral track, and a first-half header portion arranged before the first recording portion, for indicating information on an address of data to be recorded/reproduced on/from the first recording portion and information on a relative location of the first recording portion in the one spiral track; and
a predetermined number of groove sectors arranged along one spiral track, each groove sector comprising a second recording portion which is an area having a groove shape in which data are recorded/reproduced and which is arranged on the spiral track, and a second-half header portion arranged before the second recording portion, for indicating information on an address of data to be recorded/reproduced on/from the second recording portion and information on a relative location of the second recording portion along one spiral track,
the second-half header portion and the first-half header portion making a pair to be arranged in a staggered pattern,
a plurality of the groove sectors being arranged along one spiral track in succession to the plural land sectors arranged along one spiral track;
wherein the land sectors are arranged along one spiral track in succession to the plural groove sectors arranged along another spiral track, thereby performing the switch between the land sector and the groove sector alternately and successively in units of spiral tracks.
The location information on a relative location of the first recording portion in one spiral track is location information recorded, together with the address information, at the first-half header portion of the land sector arranged at the position for the switch to the groove sector among the plural land sectors arranged along one spiral track, and is the first location information indicating that the land sector is a first land sector directly before the groove sector.
The location information on a relative location of the second recording portion in one spiral track is location information recorded, together with the address information, at the second-half header portion of the groove sector arranged at the position for the switch to the land sector among the plural groove sectors arranged along one spiral track, and is the second location information indicating that the groove sector is a groove sector directly before the land sector.
The location information on a relative location of the first recording portion in one spiral track is location information recorded, together with the address information, at the first-half header portion of the second land sector arranged directly before the first land sector among the plural land sectors arranged along one spiral track, and is the third location information indicating that the second land sector is a land sector directly before the first land sector.
The location information on a relative location of the second recording portion in one spiral tra
Osawa Hideaki
Tanoue Koki
Dinh Tan
Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba
Pillsbury Madison & Sutro LLP
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