Software recognition of drive removal or insertion in a storage system
US6178520A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jul 31, 1997 |
| Grant date | Jan 23, 2001 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jul 31, 2017 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F3/0626
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A method for detection of hot-swap of disk drives in a storage subsystem devoid of special circuits for such detection and for buffering of bus signals. Typical prior designs utilize special circuits such as disk drive canisters for physically and electronically connecting the disk drives to the storage subsystem. These canisters provided electronic buffering to reduce or eliminate transient (noise and glitch) signals associated with hot-swap drive removal and insertion. In addition, such canisters provided special purpose circuits to inform storage subsystem control modules that a possible insertion or removal occurred by forcing a reset of the interconnection bus in response to detection of such transient signals. The present invention provides for such detection without need for such complex (e.g., costly) special purpose circuits. Specifically, for example in a RAID subsystem using a SCSI interface to interconnect control modules with disk drives, the methods of the present invention detect a possible removal of a disk drive either by periodically polling the SCSI IDs of the RAID subsystem for changes therein or by resetting the SCSI interface in response to errors in processin…
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.