JP2009515254A - System and method for enhancing external storage - Google Patents

Abstract

  One embodiment described herein provides a system and method for enhancing an external storage device. One embodiment includes a controller for a peripheral device of a computer system. A controller provides access to the storage media of the peripheral device. In one embodiment, the peripheral device storage medium includes a storage section reserved for the peripheral device firmware.

Description

  The present invention relates to storage devices, and more particularly to systems and methods for enhancing external storage devices.

External storage device solutions (external storage solutions) based on USB or Firewire (also called IEEE 1394), SATA (Serial ATA) are very popular. With the establishment of a lifestyle in the digital environment, the demand for storage devices has greatly increased, and more storage devices will appear. This has resulted in a cost-effective controller design that continues to perform while reducing overall system cost.
US Provisional Patent Application No. 60 / 733,067

  Most controllers include basic firmware within the controller itself that has room for enhancement. It is difficult to predict all applications of the controller, so a way to enhance the controller to deal with new applications is given by making these enhancements resident in EEPROM or the like.

  One embodiment described herein provides a system and method for enhancing an external storage device. One embodiment includes a controller for a peripheral device of the computer system. The controller provides access to the storage media of the peripheral device. In one embodiment, the peripheral device storage medium includes a storage section reserved for the peripheral device firmware.

  In the second embodiment, the control device of the peripheral storage device of the computer system identifies the presence of a plurality of hard disk drives (HDD), and has a storage capacity larger than any one of the plurality of HDDs. Logical access is given to the plurality of HDDs as a single HDD.

  In the following detailed description of the embodiments of the invention, reference is made to the accompanying drawings, in which like reference numerals designate like elements, and specific embodiments in which the invention may be practiced are shown by way of example. These embodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice the invention, and other embodiments may be utilized and may be logical, mechanical, electrical, without departing from the scope of the invention. It should be understood that general, functional, and other changes can be made. The following detailed description is, therefore, not to be taken in a limiting sense, and the scope of the present invention is defined only by the appended claims.

  In one embodiment, an external peripheral device (also referred to herein as external enclosures) includes a serial number, manufacturer identification, and model ID (collectively referred to herein as firmware enhancement). One or more are shown. In other embodiments, additional information may be included in the firmware enhancement.

  As shown in FIG. 1, information (ie, firmware enhancement) is typically provided to the firmware of the peripheral controller, for example to a small capacity non-volatile storage device such as an EEPROM or a serial EEPROM.

  In one embodiment, the peripheral device is an external storage device such as a disk drive. For example, the storage device is one of a USB (Universal Serial Bus) disk drive, an IEEE 1394 (Firewire) disk drive, or an IDE disk drive. In other embodiments, the referenced peripheral device includes another device other than a disk drive, such as a network router. In one embodiment, the peripheral device is a USB on-the-go (OTG) connected to a USB interface, serial ATA interface, Firewire (IEEE 1394 interface), ATA (serial or parallel) disk drive. ) Having a host interface including at least one of

  In one embodiment, as shown in FIG. 2, the firmware enhancement storage discussed above is allocated to a section of the peripheral storage medium rather than the controller storage medium. In one embodiment, the storage device is not included in the control device of the peripheral device.

  Accordingly, in one embodiment, the allocation of storage of firmware enhancements to a storage device on the storage medium of the peripheral device emulates a serial EEPROM of the peripheral controller in one embodiment. As a result of placing the firmware enhancement on the storage medium of the peripheral device instead of the storage medium of the peripheral control device, the cost of providing the auxiliary storage device to the control device is reduced.

  In one embodiment, the peripheral storage medium having a pre-identified storage area for storing firmware enhancements is the peripheral main storage medium. In other embodiments, multiple storage media are provided to the peripheral device, one of which is designated to store the firmware enhancement.

  At start-up, the peripheral controller scans the peripheral device's storage medium for a pre-specified location of the storage device, including firmware enhancements. Firmware enhancements will be loaded into the memory of the controller and processed by the startup routine.

  More specifically, in one embodiment, upon power-up, the host processor or controller is reset and starts executing initialization functions such as various register settings. As part of this process, logic circuitry located in the controller checks for the presence of a pre-specified section of the storage medium that stores the firmware enhancement. Once the location is determined, the enhanced firmware is loaded into the host memory for execution. Alternatively, the enhanced firmware may be loaded into a different memory for execution.

  In one embodiment, a logic circuit that causes a processor or controller to locate a pre-specified section of a peripheral storage medium is one or more operating systems (OS), a host basic input / output system (BIOS). ), Or resides in a peripheral device or other device driver.

  In one embodiment, the logic circuit recognizes that the enhanced firmware is examined on the peripheral storage medium in response to the following rather than the peripheral controller. In one embodiment, there is a predetermined convention of using a peripheral storage medium to store the enhanced firmware. As an example, there is a predetermined convention for storing enhanced firmware in the last 32 (or several times) sectors of a peripheral device available for storage media. Thus, the logic circuit examines the enhanced firmware at a predetermined location to determine whether enhanced firmware is present.

  In one embodiment, up to 64 sectors (32 kilobyte region) in the peripheral storage media are pre-designated to store the enhanced firmware. In other embodiments, different sized sectors are used.

Terradisk storage media usually has the capacity of a sweet spot, and in some cases it appears to be the best value for the amount invested. For example, in the typical example illustrated with multiple items in FIG. 3, a 500 GB IDE hard disk drive would cost $ 300, even though a 250 GB disk drive costs $ 80. Thus, as shown in FIG. 4, if two 250 GB hard disk drives are combined to form a single logical 500 GB hard disk drive (also referred to herein as a teradisk), the cost Significant savings can be achieved.

  One embodiment of a terradisk is provided by the following method, as described in the flow diagram of FIG. In process 502, at start-up (ie, power-up, reset, etc.), the disk drive controller, the specified jumper or indicator, multiple separate disk drives as a single disk drive It is determined whether it is set to indicate that it is logically handled (as shown in the configuration of FIG. 4) (usually a jumper block).

  In one embodiment, a jumper should be placed on the printed circuit board that contains the disk driver controller. Multiple distinct disk drives have a unique ID to distinguish them.

  In process 504, the controller scans multiple separate disk drives and calculates the total area of the combined entity (ie, multiple disk drives). In one embodiment, the size calculation is performed by retrieving the size from each disk drive (eg, typically using the IDENTIFY DRIVE command (for ATA and ATAPI devices)).

  In one embodiment, at startup, an IDENTIFY DRIVE command is issued to both disk drives, and the identified size parameter is held in memory and referenced by the firmware. In one embodiment, the firmware calculates the total capacity and adapts to the presence of the teradisk (ie, a combination of multiple disk drives logically represented as a single disk drive) Declare to the host.

  When connected to the host (the system to which this teradisk is connected), in process 506, the controller determines that there is only one disk drive with a total capacity equal to the combined capacity of the separate disks. Report to host. The host then treats the teradisk as a single mass storage block and issues read / write requests to the teradisk.

  In process 508, the controller determines to which disk the request is directed and routes the request accordingly. As an example, consider an embodiment where two 500 GB disk drives are combined to form a single 1 terabyte (TB) disk drive. Requests with addresses from 0 to 500 GB by the controller are routed to the first disk drive and after the address is decremented by 500 GB before passing to the second disk drive, requests from 501 GB to 1 TB are Determine to be routed to two disk drives.

  In one embodiment, as shown in FIG. 4, multiple devices connected on the same bus have different addresses by having one device act as a master and the other as a slave. In one embodiment, the plurality of devices include parallel ATA (also known as IDE) in industry terms.

  At least some embodiments, and the various structures and functional elements described herein may be implemented using hardware, firmware, instruction programs, or a combination of hardware, firmware, and instruction programs.

  Generally, the routines that are executed to implement the embodiments are implemented as part of an operating system or a specific application, component, program, object, module, or instruction sequence called a “computer program”. obtain. A computer program typically includes one or more instruction sets in various memory and storage devices of the computer at various times and operates on the computer when read and executed by one or more processors. To implement elements that include various aspects.

  While some embodiments have been described in the context of fully functional computers and computer systems, various embodiments can be distributed as various forms of program products, One skilled in the art will appreciate that it can be applied regardless of the particular type of machine or computer readable medium used to actually achieve the distribution.

  Examples of computer readable media include, but are not limited to, readable and non-readable media, such as volatile and non-volatile memory devices, read only memory (ROM), random access memory (RAM), among others. , Flash memory devices, floppy and other removable disks, magnetic disk storage media, optical storage media (eg, compact disk read only memory (CD ROM), DVD, etc.). The instructions can be executed on digital and analog communication links such as electrical, optical, acoustic, or other forms of propagated signals, eg, carrier waves, infrared signals, digital signals.

  A machine-readable medium may be used to store software and data that, when executed by a data processing system, causes the system to perform various methods. Executable software and data may be stored in various locations including, for example, ROM, volatile RAM, non-volatile memory and / or cache. A portion of this software and / or data may be stored on any one of these storage devices.

  Generally, a machine-readable medium is accessible by a machine (eg, a computer, a network device, a personal digital assistant, a manufacturing tool, any device having a set of one or more processors, etc.). Any mechanism that provides (ie, stores and / or transmits) information.

  Some aspects may be implemented, at least in part, in software. That is, the technology executes a sequence of instructions stored in a memory such as a ROM, volatile RAM, non-volatile memory, cache, magnetic and optical disk, or remote storage device in a computer system or other data processing system. It can be executed in response to a processor of the system, such as a microprocessor. The instructions may also be downloaded in the form of a compiled or linked version to a computing device over a data network.

  Alternatively, logic circuitry that performs the processes discussed above may comprise additional computer and / or machine readable media, such as discrete hardware such as large scale integrated circuits (LSIs), special purpose integrated circuits (ASICs). Hardware components or firmware such as programmable read only memory (EEPROM) that is electrically erasable.

  In various embodiments, wiring circuits can be used in combination with software instructions to implement the embodiments. Thus, the technology is not limited to any particular combination of hardware circuitry and software, nor is it limited to any particular source for instructions executed by the data processing system.

  In the description herein, various functions and operations are described as being performed or caused by software code for the sake of brevity. However, those skilled in the art will understand that what is meant by such a representation is that its function results from the execution of code by a processor, such as a microprocessor.

  In some drawings, some operations are shown in a particular order, but operations that do not need to be followed may be reordered, and other operations may be combined or separated. Some permutations or other groupings have been specifically described, but an exhaustive list is not provided for the various options as others will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Further, it should be understood that the stages can be implemented in hardware, firmware, software, or any combination thereof.

  In the foregoing specification, the disclosure has been described with reference to specific exemplary embodiments. It will be apparent that various modifications can be made to these embodiments without departing from the broader spirit and scope of the invention as set forth in the claims below. The specification and drawings are, accordingly, to be understood in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.

It is a figure which shows the structure of a typical external storage device. It is a figure which shows the structure of the external storage device by one Embodiment. It is a figure which shows the structure of a typical master and slave type | mold storage device. It is a figure which shows the structure of the external storage device by one Embodiment. 2 is a flow diagram describing a method according to one embodiment.

Claims (13)

  An apparatus comprising a peripheral device controller of a computer system, wherein the controller accesses a storage medium of the peripheral device, the storage medium including a storage section reserved for firmware of the peripheral device .   The apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the control apparatus does not include a non-volatile storage device for storing firmware of the device.   The apparatus of claim 2, wherein the device firmware includes one or more of the device serial number, the device manufacturer identification, and the device model ID.   The apparatus of claim 3, wherein the peripheral device is an external storage device solution.   The apparatus of claim 3, wherein the peripheral device is an external storage device including one of a universal serial bus (USB) disk drive, a firewire disk drive, and an IDE disk drive.   The peripheral device has a host interface including at least one of a USB interface, a serial ATA interface, a firewire (IEEE 1394 interface), and a USB on the go (OTG) connected to an ATA disk drive. Item 4. The apparatus according to Item 3.   The apparatus according to claim 5, wherein the controller scans the main storage medium of the device to find firmware and loads the firmware into the memory of the system.   An apparatus comprising a control device for accessing a peripheral device, the control device not including firmware, wherein the control device stores memory of the peripheral device reserved for emulating the firmware of the control device A device that accesses a section of media.   An apparatus comprising a control device for a peripheral storage device of a computer system, wherein the control device identifies the presence of a plurality of hard disk drives (HDDs), and from any one of the storage capacities of the plurality of HDDs A device that performs logical access to the plurality of HDDs as a single HDD having a large storage capacity.   The apparatus according to claim 8, wherein the control apparatus performs logical access to the plurality of HDDs as a single HDD having a storage capacity equal to a total storage capacity of the plurality of HDDs.   Whether the controller is responsive to initialization, one of jumpers and indicators is set to indicate that the plurality of HDDs should be logically accessed as a single HDD The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the apparatus is determined.   The device according to claim 10, wherein the control device determines a storage capacity of individual HDDs of the plurality of HDDs.   In response to receiving an access request having a logical address larger than the amount of addresses of the first HDD of the plurality of HDDs, the control device offsets the logical address by the amount of addresses of the first HDD. The apparatus according to claim 10, wherein an address to the second HDD corresponding to the logical address is used.

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