JP2002124037A - Disk unit and initialization format forming method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To form a recording format having a storage capacity increased by omitting part of additional signals to enable to rewrite in a sector unit. SOLUTION: In a disk unit provided with a disk which is a disk-shaped recording medium, a means which rotates the disk, a means to form tracks by recording user data on a plurality of sectors of the circumferential direction of the disk, and a means to reproduce the above user data from the recorded tracks, a first format formation including the user data, a preamble and a gap in each sector, and a second format formation in which the gap and the preamble at the adjacent sides of mutually adjacent sectors, can be selected. The first and second format formations are selected on the basis of a switch for mode selection, or the initialization command of a disk recording state from a host.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a disk drive, and more particularly, to a data recording system for a recording / reproducing apparatus using a disk-shaped recording medium such as a hard disk drive.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In recent years, products that record video and audio signals on a hard disk device and make use of the random access performance thereof have been proposed. For example, while recording a television program being broadcast on a hard disk device, the user can reproduce the program at the desired time from the beginning and watch it. ing. The hard disk device is expected to be developed not only in the field of computers but also in applied products for video / audio recording.

Video information generally has a large amount of information. For example, when a video signal of the NTSC standard is sampled by 8 bits at a frequency of 4 Fsc, the data transfer rate is 1 bit.
4.3 MB / sec. With the development of image data compression technology in recent years, a data compression method for realizing a significantly lower transfer rate while suppressing deterioration of image quality has been widely applied. As a well-known data compression method, D
There is MPEG2 applied to VD, digital broadcasting, and the like. In MPEG2, video data is compressed using video information for a plurality of frames as one unit. The data compression rate varies depending on the content of the image, the correlation between the information in each frame, and the required quality. However, if the data transfer rate after compression is approximately 5 Mbit / s or more, the image quality is not so noticeable. Image quality is obtained.

A conventional hard disk drive is based on a recording format that can be rewritten in fixed-length sectors in units of 512 bytes. To enable rewriting on a sector-by-sector basis, additional signals such as a signal that separates between sectors, a preamble signal that is required to reproduce a clock synchronized with the data section, and a synchronization signal that indicates the beginning of the data section are required. And

A plurality of concentric tracks are formed on a disk of a hard disk drive. Each track has a configuration in which a servo field in which a servo signal serving as a reference signal for head positioning is recorded and a data field in which data is recorded are alternately arranged. In the conventional format, a plurality of sectors are recorded in each data area. Each sector is added with a gap area which divides the sector so that each sector can be rewritten, and a signal such as a SYNC signal or a preamble signal recorded immediately before a data recording section of the sector.

For example, when recording video signal information at a transfer rate of 5 Mbits / sec after image compression on a hard disk drive, a capacity of 37.5 Mbytes is consumed in one minute, and a sector of 75 bytes of 512 bytes is used. It is continuously recorded in 000 sectors. In applications in which data having a file size sufficiently larger than that of a sector is continuously recorded, rewriting is not performed on a sector-by-sector basis, and most of the additional data necessary for rewriting for each sector is not used. Will not do it. Therefore, in such an application, recording the above additional data wastes a recording area. As an example of efficiently recording video information having a large file size and an indefinite size, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 09-097479 has been proposed.

[0007]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION An object of the present invention is to realize a hard disk drive capable of efficiently recording information having a large file size such as video information. Also, according to the present invention, the hard disk drive can
A format that can be rewritten in 2-byte sector units is also supported, and a user can appropriately select a format suitable for a file to be recorded according to the purpose of use. At this time, it is possible to realize an efficient recording format for recording a large file size by minimizing software and hardware changes with respect to the conventional hard disk device, thereby reducing costs. is there.

[0008]

In order to solve the above problems, the present invention mainly employs the following configuration.

A disk which is a disk-shaped recording medium, means for rotating the disk, means for recording user data in a plurality of sectors in the circumferential direction of the disk to form a track, Means for reproducing the user data, a first format including a user data, a preamble and a gap for each sector, and a gap and a preamble on the adjacent side of an adjacent sector are omitted. A second format formation.

[0010]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS A disk drive according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a hardware configuration of a hard disk device according to an embodiment of the present invention. 1 is a magnetic disk, 2 is a magnetic head, 3 is a spindle motor, 4 is VCM, 5 is R /
It is a W amplifier.

The magnetic disk 1 has a disk coated with a magnetic material. The magnetic head 2 includes a recording head and a reproducing head. The R / W amplifier 5 supplies a recording current to the magnetic head 2 during recording, and amplifies a reproduction signal of the magnetic head 2 during reproduction. The recording head converts a current input from the R / W amplifier 5 into a recording magnetic field and gives magnetization to a magnetic material on the surface of the magnetic disk 1. The reproducing head outputs to the R / W amplifier 5 a voltage change corresponding to a change in a magnetic field generated on the disk surface due to the magnetization recorded on the magnetic disk 1.

The rotation shaft of the spindle motor 3 is connected to the center of the magnetic disk 1, and the rotation of the spindle motor 3 rotates the magnetic disk 1. The movable part of VCM4 is
When connected to the magnetic head 2 and the VCM 4 operates, the magnetic head 2 can be moved to different radial positions on the magnetic disk 1. VCM4 and spindle motor 3
By the above operation, the magnetic disk 1 can be positioned at an arbitrary position, and signal recording and reproduction can be performed along the circumferential direction of the disk.

FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining a recording state of the magnetic disk 1. The magnetic disk 1 has a circumferential track 31 formed by a recording head. The track 31 is composed of a plurality (eight in this example) of servo fields 32 and data fields 33. The servo field 32
Signals and information necessary for the magnetic head 2 to accurately scan the center of a specific track 31 on the circumference are recorded. The servo field 32 is reproduced by the magnetic head 2 and is not newly recorded. In the data field 33, recording and reproduction of a signal including user data is performed.

In FIG. 1, 6 is an R / W channel, 7 is error correction, 8 is a data buffer, 9 is an I / F, 10 is a bus, 11 is a system controller, 12 is a servo controller, 13 is a servo signal, 14 is a motor driver. The R / W channel 6 performs code modulation on the digital data input at the time of recording and outputs the digital data to the R / W amplifier 5.
The R / W channel 6 restores digital data by performing waveform equalization of a reproduction signal, clock reproduction, and data strobe processing during reproduction. Further, the R / W channel 6 controls the servo controller 12 when the servo field 32 is reproduced.
The servo signal 13 is output to the controller. Servo controller 12
Drives the VCM 4 via the motor driver 14 so that a target track on which recording or reproduction is performed can be searched for and positioned accurately based on the state of the servo signal 13.

The error correction 7 encodes an error correction code at the time of recording and adds it to user data to generate recording digital data. The error correction 7 detects and corrects a data error based on the error correction code added during reproduction. The data buffer 8 temporarily stores data input from the bus 10 and received by the I / F 9 at the time of recording, and outputs the data at a predetermined timing after the magnetic head 2 is positioned on a target recording track.

The data buffer 8 temporarily stores data reproduced at the time of reproduction, and outputs the data to the I / F 9 at a predetermined timing according to the state of the bus 10. The I / F 9 receives a command or data input from the bus 10 and outputs a status or data corresponding to the command to the bus 10. The system controller 11 is a microcomputer that controls the entire system of the hard disk device. In order for the hard disk device to operate normally in response to a command from the host input from the bus 10, the data buffer 8 and the I / O
F9, commands and status are exchanged with the servo controller 12 and the like.

The output of the switch SW shown in FIG. 1 is connected to the system controller 11, and the system controller 11 determines the state of the switch SW. Switch SW
There are two states, that is, a state of being tilted to the A side having a high potential (hereinafter referred to as “A state”) and a state of being tilted to the B side having a low potential (hereinafter referred to as “B state”). . When the switch issues the command to initialize the recording state of the magnetic disk device via the bus 10 when the switch SW is in the A state, the following recording format initialization is executed.

FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining the configuration of the track 31 when the switch SW is in the A state. Truck 31
Consists of a servo field 32 and a data field 33. The data field 33 includes a plurality of data sectors 34
Consists of Each data sector 34 includes a gap A 35, a preamble 36, a SYNC 37, user data 38,
CC39 and gap B40. The gap A35 and the gap B40 separate the data sectors 34 so that even if the data sectors 34 are rewritten in a state where a slight positional shift occurs in the circumferential direction, the adjacent data before and after in the circumferential direction are rewritten. It has a function of preventing the overwriting of the end of the sector 34 by mistake.

The preamble 36 is for operating a clock reproduction function synchronized with the data of the R / W channel 6 during the reproduction period of the preamble 36 in order to read information recorded thereafter. The SYNC 37 has a specific pattern, and recognizes the first byte of information by detecting this at the time of reproduction.

The user data 38 is an area for recording digital data to be recorded transferred from the host via the bus 10. The ECC 39 is error correction code data encoded according to the user data 38 by the error correction 7. The track configuration shown in FIG. 3 is a typical recording format of a magnetic disk drive, which enables digital data to be rewritten in data sector 34 units.

Next, when the switch issues the command to instruct the initialization of the magnetic disk device via the bus 10 when the switch SW is in the B state, the following recording format initialization is performed. Is executed.

FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining the configuration of the track 31 when the switch SW is in the B state. The track 31 includes a servo field 32 and a data field 33. The data field 33 includes three types of data sectors, a data sector A42, a data sector B43, and a data sector C44. These three types of data sectors 42,
43 and 44 are user data 38 and ECC in a common configuration.
39. The data sector A42 formed immediately after the servo field 32 has a gap A just before the common configuration.
35, preamble 36, and SYNC 37 are recorded.
Data sector C immediately before servo field 32
44, the gap B40 is recorded immediately after the common configuration.

According to the track configuration shown in FIG. 4, the gap A 35, the preamble 36, the SYNC 37, the gap B
A part of 40 can be omitted. Accordingly, the area of the user data that can be recorded in the data field 33 of the magnetic disk 1 increases, and the capacity of the hard disk device can be increased. However, the data rewriting unit is
It is not a data sector unit but a data field 33 unit or track 31 unit.

Note that SYNC may be added before the data sector B (43) and the data sector C (44) in FIG. This is because the added SYNC becomes effective when the user data in the data sector A or B has a data defect that cannot be repaired by the respective ECC.

FIG. 5 shows another example of the recording format initialized when the switch SW is in the B state. It is not always efficient to configure the data field 33 only with data sectors including a predetermined amount of user data 38 as shown in FIGS. The disk is divided into several concentric zones, and, for example, in a so-called zone bit recording system in which the recording format is configured so that the recording density of each zone is substantially constant, the recording efficiency is reduced in a certain zone. In some cases, a fixed-length data sector is divided and recorded at a position corresponding to the servo field 32 in order to improve the quality.

The divided data sectors are recorded as a split data sector A45 and a split data sector B46. A split data sector A45 recorded immediately before the servo field 32 includes split user data A47 and a gap B40. Split data sector B4 recorded immediately after servo field 32
6 is a gap A35, a preamble 36, a SYNC3
7. Consists of split user data B48 and ECC39. The split user data A47 and the split user data B48 combine to form a predetermined amount of user data. The ECC 39 is encoded based on the predetermined amount of user data. Servo field 32
Are not adjacent to the data sector B4 in FIG.
3 and does not include additional data.

The switch SW shown in FIG. 1 may be any switch having a trigger function for switching between the format shown in FIG. 3 and the format shown in FIG. Any of the formatting may be selected in the signal processing of the data buffer 8. That is,
It is sufficient that the signal processing in the system controller and the data buffer can be performed so that the switching state of the switch SW is detected based on the recording state initialization command from the host via the bus 10 and appropriate formatting is performed.

In FIG. 1, the switch state is detected when the format is switched. Instead of providing this switch, the format command (the first format or the second format) is added to the initialization command itself from the host. ) May be included (eg, information with a mode switching flag) to switch the format mode by signal processing inside the disk device. In this case, the setting of the switch is not excluded, and the format mode may be selected by the initialization command itself in a state where the switch is provided, or the format mode may be selected in the switch state. It is important that people are able to choose.

As described above, in the disk device according to the embodiment of the present invention, a plurality of sectors constituting a data field sandwiched between two servo fields in a recording format of a conventional hard disk device are used. , And removes additional signals such as a gap area and a preamble, which are present in, and directly connects sectors to form a data field. At this time, the rewriting unit is a data field unit or a track unit sandwiched between the servo signals.

The configuration of such linked sectors is the same as that of a data sector of a normal format except for an additional signal. As a result, the software and hardware of the hard disk device need not be changed much, and a function that can select a normal recording format according to the purpose and use of the user can be easily realized.

[0031]

According to the conventional hard disk device, by providing a function of initializing to a recording format in which a part of an additional signal necessary for rewriting in a sector unit is omitted, a large file such as video information can be obtained. In this case, an efficient recording format suitable for the use of the hard disk drive can be realized, and the storage capacity of the hard disk device can be increased.

Further, since the structure of the user data and error correction of the sector is the same as that of the conventional format, it can be realized with less hardware and software changes than the conventional hard disk device.

Further, the user can easily select a conventional recording format and a recording format that can efficiently record a large file according to the intended use, and can add value to the conventional hard disk device.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a hardware configuration of a disk device according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a recording state of a magnetic disk.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a configuration of a conventional data sector.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a configuration of a data sector according to the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing another configuration of the data sector of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Magnetic disk 2 Magnetic head 3 Spindle motor 4 VCM 5 R / W amplifier 6 R / W channel 7 Error correction 8 Data buffer 9 I / F 10 Bus 11 System controller 12 Servo controller 13 Servo signal 14 Motor driver

Claims (6)

[Claims] 1. A disk which is a disk-shaped recording medium, means for rotating the disk, means for recording user data in a plurality of sectors in the circumferential direction of the disk to form a track, and Means for reproducing the user data from a track, comprising: forming a first format including user data, a preamble and a gap for each sector; and forming a gap and a preamble on an adjacent side of an adjacent sector. And a second format that is omitted. 2. The disk device according to claim 1, further comprising a switch for selecting the first format formation and the second format formation. 3. The disk drive according to claim 1, wherein the first format formation and the second format formation are selected based on a disk recording state initialization command from a host. Disk device. 4. The disk device according to claim 1, wherein the disk-shaped recording medium is a magnetic disk for a hard disk. 5. The disk device according to claim 1, wherein user data recorded and reproduced on the disk initialized by the second format formation includes video information and / or audio information. A disk device characterized by the above-mentioned. 6. An initialization format forming method for a disk device for recording user data in a plurality of sectors in a circumferential direction of a rotating disk-shaped disk, wherein a user is provided for each sector based on an instruction to select an initialization format. A method for forming an initializing format, wherein a first format including data, a preamble and a gap, and a second format in which a gap and a preamble on adjacent sides of adjacent sectors are omitted can be selected. .