Patent · US Expired

Method and system for correcting long bursts of consecutive errors

US4916701A · kind A · utility

25Cited by
6References
11Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateSep 21, 1988
Grant dateApr 10, 1990
Priority date
Expiry dateSep 21, 2008

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG11B20/1866
  • WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A method is disclosed for correcting multibyte errors in a magnetic medium on which data is recorded in variable length blocks that comprise subblocks of data bytes and corresponding check bytes and include error correction code (ECC) for which ECC syndromes are generated during reading. A sequence of N sequential parity check bytes is written at the end of each block. After ECC syndromes are generated during reading, parity syndromes are generated by comparing parity check bytes computed from data bytes and check bytes as read with the parity check bytes as written. When a long-burst error occurs, a pointer points to the first of the N consecutive bytes in a block that could have been influenced by the error burst. After correcting correctable errors in all subblocks not affected by the N bytes identified by the pointer, and adjusting the parity syndromes for errors thus corrected, the adjusted parity syndromes are used to correct the errors in the N bytes indicated by the pointer. Unused ECC syndromes are then adjusted for errors corrected by the adjusted parity syndromes and used to correct all correctable errors then remaining.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.