Manipulation of computer volume segments

Details Manipulation of computer volume segments Manipulation of computer volume segments

1999-08-13

2002-09-17

Yoo, Do Hyun (Department: 2187)

Electrical computers and digital processing systems: memory

Storage accessing and control

Specific memory composition

C707S793000, C711S162000, C711S170000, C711S173000, C273S348100, C273S348100, C273S108500

Reexamination Certificate

active

06453383

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to manipulation of computer volume segments without archiving or destroying user data, and more particularly to tools and techniques for resizing, moving, merging, consolidating, scattering, and/or mirroring volume segments such as volume segments found in segmented partition computer systems.
TECHNICAL BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Computers utilize a wide variety of disks as storage media for user data. Disk technologies currently provide optical disks, magnetic disks, hard disks, floppy disks, and removable disks, and new disk technologies are being actively researched and developed. Indeed, some disks used by computers in the future may be cubical or some other shape rather than flat and circular. Investigation into non-volatile semiconductor storage devices is ongoing.
FIG. 1
illustrates a disk
100
attached to a disk drive
102
. The disk
100
illustrates physical characteristics of both floppies and hard disks; cubical disks or other disks may appear in different configurations than the one shown here. The disk
100
contains a number of concentric data cylinders such as the cylinder
104
. The cylinder
104
contains several data sectors, including sectors
106
and
108
. The sectors
106
and
108
are located on an upper side
110
of the disk
100
; additional sectors may be located on a lower side
112
of the disk
100
. The sides
110
,
112
of the disk
100
define a platter
114
. A hard disk may contain several platters. The upper side
110
of the disk
100
is accessed by a head
116
mounted on an arm
118
secured to the drive
102
. Optical or cubical disks may be accessed by other means, such as photoemitters or photoreceptors.
A given sector on the disk
100
may be identified by specifying a head, a cylinder, and a sector within the cylinder. A triplet specifying the head number, cylinder number, and sector number in this manner is known as a “physical sector address.” Alternatively, a given sector may be identified by a logical sector address, which is a single number rather than a triplet of numbers.
An operating system manages access, not only to the disk
100
, but to other computer resources as well. Resources typically managed by the operating system include one or more disks and disk drives, memory (RAM and/or ROM), microprocessors, and I/O devices such as a keyboard, mouse, screen, printer, tape drive, modem, serial port, parallel port, or network port.
Many disks mold the available space into one or more partitions by using a partition table located on the disk. A wide variety of partitions are used, and more partition types will no doubt be defined over time. A partial list of current partitions and their associated file systems is given in U.S. Pat. No. 5,930,831 and incorporated here by reference. The list includes a variety of 12-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit FAT file systems and numerous other file systems. Tools and techniques for manipulating FAT and certain other partitions are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,675,769, 5,706,472, and 5,930,831 assigned to PowerQuest Corporation, incorporated herein by this reference.
Some file systems provide useful features not available under many existing FAT file systems. Examples include the NT File System (“NTFS”) and the Novell NetWare file system (“NetWare FS”) (NetWare is a mark of Novell, Inc.). Discussions of NTFS are provided in “Inside the Windows NT File System”, by Helen Custer, ISBN 1-55615-660-X, as well as in marketing and technical materials available in hard copy and on the Internet from Microsoft Corporation and other sources. Discussions of NetWare FS are provided in Chapter 23 of “NetWare 4For Professionals”, by Bierer et al., ISBN 1-56205-217-9, as well as in marketing and technical materials available in hard copy and on the Internet from Novell, Inc. and other sources. Some of the comments herein apply only to certain versions of NetWare, such as those prior to version 5. Those of skill in the art will note that these discussions sometimes involve unimplemented specifications or mere speculations, particularly in the case of NTFS. NTFS features include, without limitation: use of a database paradigm to support indexing of file attributes; multiple data streams per file; blurring of the distinction between system and user areas; recoverability by use of a log; recoverability by use of transactions; support for large disks; security descriptors constraining access to file objects; Unicode names; support for POSIX features such as links; bad cluster remapping; caching support; virtual memory support; system structure compression; balanced tree directory structures; support for suballocation whereby a cluster may hold data belonging to one or more files; support for volume spanning, volume sets, stripe sets, mirror sets, and other features which divide a file system's contents between disks or partitions; and a relocatable system area.
One partition table composition, denoted herein as the “IBM-compatible” partition table, is found on the disks used in many IBM® personal computers and IBM-compatible computers (IBM is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation). Although IBM is not the only present source of personal computers, server computers, and computer operating systems and/or file system software, the term “IBM-compatible” is widely used in the industry to distinguish certain computer systems from other computer systems such as Macintosh computer systems produced by Apple Computer (Macintosh is a market of Apple Computer). IBM-compatible partition tables may be used on a wide variety of disks, with a variety of partition and file system types, in a variety of ways.
As shown in
FIG. 2
, one version of an IBM-compatible partition table
200
includes an Initial Program Loader (“IPL”) identifier
202
, four primary partition identifiers
204
, and a boot identifier
206
. As shown in
FIG. 3
, each partition identifier
204
includes a boot indicator
300
to indicate whether the partition in question is bootable. At most one of the partitions in the set of partitions defined by the partition table
200
is bootable at any given time.
Each partition identifier
204
also includes a starting address
302
, which is the physical sector address of the first sector in the partition in question, and an ending address
304
, which is the physical sector address of the last sector in the partition. A sector count
306
holds the total number of disk sectors in the partition. A boot sector address
308
holds the logical sector address corresponding to the physical starting address
302
.
Some IBM-compatible computer systems allow “logical partitions” as well as the primary partitions just described. All logical partitions are contained within one primary partition; a primary partition which contains logical partitions is also known as an “extended partition.”
Each partition identifier
204
also includes a system indicator
310
. The system indicator
310
identifies the type of file system contained in the partition, which in turn defines the physical arrangement of data that is stored in the partition on the disk
100
(FIG.
1
). Values not recognized by a particular operating system are treated as designating an unknown file system. The file system associated with a specific partition of the disk
100
(
FIG. 1
) determines the format in which data is stored in the partition, namely, the physical arrangement of user data and of file system structures in the portion of the disk
100
that is delimited by the starting address
302
and the ending address
304
of the partition in question. At any given time, each partition thus contains at most one type of file system.
Some computer systems, such as many using NetWare FS or NTFS, mold disk storage into “segmented partitions” or “segmented volumes” with an approach somewhat different from that described above. On such systems, a “volume” is an instance of a file system. Hard drives may be divided into partitions, and volumes may be divided into “segments

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