Seagate Assigned Two Patents

Limiting storage device write caching

Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,375,166) developed by Michael M. Lee, San Jose, CA, and Maurice L. Schlumberger, Menlo Park, CA, for "methods and structure for limiting storage device write caching."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Methods and structures for limiting the write portion of a local cache memory in one or more disk drives of a storage system such that a storage controller coupled to each may mirror the content and structure of the write portion of each disk drive. The size of the write portion of the local cache memory in a disk drive controller may be controlled by the storage controller or other host device. The size of the write portion may be controlled by switch settings to select among a plurality of predefined sizes or may be programmed by the storage controller or other host device. Programming such a size value may be by setting parameter values in a configuration page of a SCSI disk drive’s local memory or may be by a vendor unique command sent by a host device to the disk drive."

The patent application was filed on Jan. 15, 2010 (12/688,503).

Enabling spanning for storage device

Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,364,929) developed by Jonathan W. Haines, Boulder, CO, and Wayne H. Vinson, Longmont, CO, and Timothy R. Feldman, Louisville, CO, for "enabling spanning for a storage device."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A storage device, e.g., an SSD, is configured to enable spanning for a logical block between pages of the device. In one example, a device includes a storage module to receive data to be stored, wherein the data comprises a plurality of logical blocks, and wherein a size of the plurality of logical blocks exceeds a size of a first page of the device, and a spanning determination module to determine whether to partition one of the plurality of logical blocks into a first partition and a second partition, wherein the storage module is configured to partition the one of the plurality of logical blocks into the first partition and the second partition and to store the first partition in the first page and the second partition in a second, different page when the spanning determination module determines to partition the one of the plurality of logical blocks."

The patent application was filed on Oct. 23, 2009 (12/604,842).