Seagate Assigned Four Patents

Prioritizing commands in storage device

Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,327,093) developed by four co-inventors for "prioritizing commands in a data storage device."

The co-inventors are Edwin Scott Olds, Norman, OK, Stephen R. Cornaby, Yukon, OK, Mark David Hertz, Oklahoma City, OK, and Kenny Troy Coker, Mustang, OK.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A unique system and method for ordering commands may reduce disc access latency while giving preference to pending commands. The method and system involves giving preference to pending commands in a set of priority queues. The method and system involve identifying a pending command and processing other non-pending commands in route to the pending command if performance will not be penalized in doing so. The method and system include a list of command node references referring to a list of sorted command nodes that are to be scheduled for processing."

The patent application was filed on Oct. 21, 2004 (10/970,424).

Storage device including failure diagnostic log

Seagate Technology, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,327,193) developed by Karl Louis Enarson, Longmont, CO, and John Edward Moon, Superior, CO, for a "data storage device including a failure diagnostic log."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "In a particular embodiment, a data storage device is disclosed that can include a data storage medium having a device failure partition including a device failure log to store operational state information. The operational state information can include commands, data, performance data, and environmental data associated with the data storage device. The data storage device can further include a controller adapted to selectively store the operational state information to the device failure log in a first-in first-out (FIFO) order representing recent states of the data storage device."

The patent application was filed on April 13, 2009 (12/422,607).

Adjustable ECC length in electrical storage device

Seagate Technology, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,327,226) developed by Bernardo Rub, Sudbury, MA, for an "adjustable error correction code length in an electrical storage device."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "An apparatus includes a memory that is allocated to reported portions and overprovisioned portions. The apparatus includes an error correction circuit that communicates with the memory in error correction coded data that has a controllable ECC length. The ECC length is a function of a history of error reports. A memory allocation engine balances a size of the overprovisioned portions to maintain a size of the reported portions. The balancing is performed as a function of an average of ECC lengths in the ECC length table over a time interval in which a size of the memory decreases with accumulated erase cycles of the memory."

The patent application was filed on Feb. 3, 2010 (12/699,505).

Preserving data of a storage device

Seagate Technology, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,325,434) developed by Yun Namkoong, Suwon-si, South Korea, Gyu Taek Kim, Seoul, South Korea, and Ho-Youl Kim, Suwon-si, South Korea, for a "method and apparatus for preserving data of a storage device."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A method is disclosed for preserving data in a hard disk drive, in which data loss due to adjacent track erase (ATE) phenomenon can be minimized by relocating data, which is written in a zone where the ATE phenomenon is likely to occur since frequency of use is high, to another zone having a low TPI when writing the data in a disk."

The patent application was filed on April 23, 2010 (12/766,436).