Patent · US Expired

Phantom duplex copy group apparatus for a disk drive array data storge subsystem

US5239659A · kind A · utility

127Cited by
5References
36Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateJun 19, 1991
Grant dateAug 24, 1993
Priority date
Expiry dateJun 19, 2011

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F2201/815
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

This apparatus makes use of a disk drive array to store data records for an associated host processor. This disk drive array emulates the operation of a large form factor disk drive by using a plurality of interconnected small form factor disk drives. These small form factor disk drives are configured into redundancy groups, each of which contains n+m disk drives for storing data records and redundancy information thereon. The use of this configuration is significantly more reliable than a large form factor disk drive. However, in order to maintain compatibility with host processors that request the duplex copy group feature, the phantom duplex copy group apparatus of the present invention mimics the creation of a duplex copy group in this dynamically mapped data storage subsystem using a disk array and a phantom set of pointers that mimic the data storage devices on which the data records are stored.

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