Disk drive memory
US5077736A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Feb 13, 1990 |
| Grant date | Dec 31, 1991 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Feb 13, 2010 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC Y)Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
- CPC primaryY10S360/903
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
The disk drive memory of the present invention uses a large plurality of small form factor disk drives to implement an inexpensive, high performance, high reliability disk drive memory that emulates the format and capability of large form factor disk drives. The plurality of disk drives are switchably interconnectable to form redundancy groups of N+M parallel connnected disk drives to store data thereon. The N+M disk drives are used to store the N segments of each data word plus M redundancy segments. In addition, a pool of R backup disk drives is maintained to automatically substitute a replacement disk drive for a disk drive in a redundancy group that fails during operation. The number N of data segments in each data redundancy group can be varied throughout the disk drive memory to thereby match the characteristics of the input data or operational parameters within the disk drive memory. Furthermore, a group of U unassigned disk drives can be maintained as a stock of disk drives that can be powered up as needed and assigned to either a redundancy group or to the pool of backup disk drives.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.