Raid controller system and method with ATA emulation host interface
US6772108B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventor
Key dates
| Filing date | Sep 21, 2000 |
| Grant date | Aug 3, 2004 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Sep 29, 2021 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F3/0689
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A RAID storage device controller provides a host interface for interfacing the controller to a host system bus. The host interface is isolated from the attached storage devices, for example IDE disk drives, so that the actual attached drives are not limited in number or interface protocol. Various device ports can be implemented, and various RAID strategies, e.g. level 3 and level 5, can be used. In all the cases, the host interface provides a standard, uniform interface to the host, namely an ATA interface, and preferably a dual channel ATA interface. The host interface emulates the ATA single or dual channel interface and emulates one or two attached IDE devices per channel, regardless of the actual number of devices physically connected to the controller. Thus, for example, five or seven IDE drives can be deployed in RAID level 5 protocol without changing the standard BIOS in a PCI host machine. Thus the RAID controller is transparent relative to a standard dual channel ATA controller board.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.