JP2007188549A - Disk publisher - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To extend lifetime as the whole of a disk publisher by preventing over-load on individual drive by averaging load on the drive for writing information. <P>SOLUTION: Respective total use times of a plurality of drives 3 for writing information are stored in a use time storage part 6. A control part 4 selects a drive of a minimum total use time, sets a new unrecorded disk to the drive, to write information. The use time for writing is integrated to the already described total use time. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a disk publisher.

A plurality of unrecorded disks (CD-R, DVD-R, etc.) are prepared in advance in the disk publisher, and the unrecorded disk is inserted into the information writing drive in response to a user command. Write digital information to the information recording surface. The disc for which the writing process has been completed is taken out from the drive and stocked. The series of operations described above are automatically performed.
Some disc publishers have a function of printing on the label side of the disc.
As described above, a plurality of information writing drives are installed in the disk publisher in accordance with the required disk processing throughput.
As described above, refer to Patent Document 1 as a conventional example of a disk publisher.
Moreover, please refer to patent document 2 as a literature relevant to this invention.

JP 2000-260172 A JP 2004-9435 A

The inventors of the present invention have repeatedly examined the durability of the disk publisher, and have found that the consumption of the information writing drive is the most advanced in the elements constituting the disk publisher. That is, the information writing drive regulates the durability of the disk publisher. In particular, in a disk publisher having a plurality of drives, even if a problem occurs in one drive, the entire apparatus of the disk publisher is affected.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to prevent overloading of individual drives by averaging the load applied to the information writing drive, thereby extending the life of the entire disk publisher apparatus. .

The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and the first aspect thereof is defined as follows. That is,
A disk publisher comprising a plurality of write drives, a usage time counting device that counts the usage time of each drive, a usage time storage device that stores the usage time for each drive, and the usage time storage device A disk publisher comprising: a write control device that refers to a stored use time and designates a drive having a minimum total use time.
According to the disk publisher configured as described above, the drive having the minimum total usage time is selected, and information is written using this drive. Therefore, it is possible to avoid the concentration of use on a specific drive, and the load applied to each drive is averaged.
In the first aspect, the drives are used in ascending order of the total use time of the drive regardless of the drive processing speed (double speed) and the amount of information to be written. In other words,
Even if it is the next drive to be used in view of the total usage time, this is in use, and on the other hand, the writing process of the drive that should not be used in the case of the total usage time is completed. Even in this case, the latter cannot be selected. Therefore, if the drive with the least number of times of opening and closing the tray is specified from among the empty drives as in the second aspect and this drive is used, while maintaining high throughput as a disk publisher, The use frequency can be averaged.

The invention of the third aspect is defined as follows. That is,
In the disk publisher of the first or second aspect, the maintenance request is notified when the total usage time for each drive exceeds a predetermined threshold.
According to the disk publisher configured as described above, when the total usage time of the consumable drive exceeds the total usage time threshold that is the guarantee period, a maintenance request is notified. Therefore, appropriate maintenance can be performed.
As a specific aspect of the maintenance notification, a message regarding the necessity of maintenance can be notified to the administrator in the form of an email.

Hereafter, each element which comprises this invention is demonstrated.
The disc publisher includes a disc supply unit that holds an unrecorded disc (CD-R, DVD-R, etc.), a drive that records digital information on the information recording surface of the unrecorded disc, a stock unit that stores the recorded disc, and a disc The transport mechanism is provided. Furthermore, a label printing unit for printing on the label surface of the disc can be provided.
The number of discs existing in the stock part can be detected by monitoring the amount of discs inserted into the stock unit and the amount of discs exiting from the stock unit and taking the difference between the two.

In order to count the drive usage time, the time at which data writing to the disk is started and the time at which writing is completed are detected, and the time interval between the two is calculated. In addition, the usage time of the drive can be obtained by dividing the size of the written data by the drive speed of the drive.
The drive usage time obtained each time the disk is processed in this way is accumulated for each drive. As a result, the total use time can be obtained for each drive.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in more detail based on examples.
FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of a disk publisher 1 according to an embodiment of the present invention.
The disk publisher 1 is generally composed of a disk publisher main body 2 and a control unit 4. The disk publisher main body 2 is provided with n (three in the embodiment) information writing drives 3, and serial numbers 1 to n are assigned to the respective drives.
The control unit 4 includes a usage time storage unit 6. The application program 5 of the control unit 4 specifies the drive having the minimum total usage time from the usage time storage unit 6 and executes the writing process.

The detailed configuration of the disk publisher 1 is shown in FIGS.
FIG. 2 shows the main body 20 of the disk publisher. The unrecorded disc CD is stacked and held in the disc supply unit 21, and the unrecorded disc CD is taken out by the transfer device 23. The transfer device 23 can attach and detach an unrecorded disc CD by a clamper 24. The unrecorded disc CD is inserted into any of the writing drives 25-1 to 25-3, and digital information is written on the information recording surface. The disc on which the writing process has been completed is taken out from the writing drive, inserted into the label printer 27, and printing is performed on the label surface.
The disc for which label printing has been completed is stacked on the stock unit 29. The stock unit 29 is provided with a lid 31 to prevent unauthorized removal of the disc after the writing process is completed.

The control system of the disk publisher is shown in FIG.
The control unit 40 includes a CPU and controls each element according to a control program stored in the program storage unit 51.
The user's ID card is passed through the card reader 41. Information stored in the ID card is read from the card reader 41 to identify the user. When a disc created by the specified user exists in the stock unit 29, the disc is taken out from the stock unit 29.
The lamp 45 is lit (or flashes) in response to the first control signal. Thus, when the number of created disks in the stock unit 29 exceeds a predetermined threshold, the lamp 45 is turned on to notify all users that the amount of the created disks has increased.

Reference numeral 47 denotes a network interface, to which a client 10 composed of an administrator PC and clients 9A to 9N for creating disks are connected.
The storage unit 50 includes a program storage unit 51, and the program storage unit 51 includes the control device 4.
A control program for operating the zero CPU is stored.
Various threshold values are stored in the threshold value storage unit 52. This threshold value can be changed from the input unit.
The message storage unit 54 stores various messages to be transmitted to the client.
The usage time storage unit 56 stores the usage time of each drive. In this example, 1
The difference between the write start time and the write end time for one disk is taken as the use time of one job, and the total use time of each drive can be calculated by integrating the use time.
A table of usage times stored in the usage time storage unit 56 is shown in Table 1.

One table is created for each drive. Taking Table 1 created for drive 1 as an example, each time a write job to drive 1 is input, its job ID
Then, the write start time and write end time for the disc are recorded. The usage time is calculated from the difference between the two. The total usage time (total usage time) is an integrated value of the usage time.
The status indicates the current state of the drive. The drive 1 is in use as the job xxxx5679 is executed. If the drive is being reserved or is out of order, this is also indicated in the status.

In the disk publisher of this embodiment, as the disk is created, the disk creation and removal history is recorded and stored in the processing history storage unit 53 as shown in Table 2 below.

In Table 2, the date and time taken out by the creator is also recorded. Further, whether or not the administrator has forcibly removed the disk from the stock unit 29 and the date and time when the administrator removed the disk are also recorded.
Then, the processing disk No. is calculated from the total number of processing disks (= processing disk No.).
. The number of disks remaining in the stock unit 29 is specified by subtracting the number of creators extracted (ΣY) and the number of managers extracted (ΣY). See the rightmost column of Table 2.

The number m of created disks existing in the stock unit 29 is compared with a predetermined first threshold value _MT1 . In this embodiment, since the disk capacity of the stock unit 29 is 50, the first control signal is generated when the remaining number of created disks in the stock unit 29 reaches 80% (= 40). . The threshold value can be arbitrarily set via the input unit 43.
The lamp 45 is turned on by this first control signal. Furthermore, the first message corresponding to the first control signal is read from the message storage unit 54 and the client 9 for the user is read.
A to 9N is sent as mail. The first message requests all users to eject the created disc.

When a user who is a disc creator takes out a disc from the stock unit 29, the card reader 41 is caused to read a card capable of specifying the creator's ID. For example, when the creator A passes the ID card to the card reader 41 in the state of Table 2, the control unit 40 refers to the relationship of Table 2 stored in the processing history storage unit 53 and the creator is A. , Both the creator takeout and the administrator take out are “N”. To extract. The disc is stocked 29
The remaining number “m” of the corresponding disc is counted from the top of the existing disc.
In this state, when a take-out confirmation command is input via the input unit 43, the lid 31 is opened and the transfer device 23 takes out the m-th disc from above.

Next, the operation of the disk publisher of this embodiment will be described with reference to FIG.
In step 1, a write command is input. At this time, a command for creating a disc and a content to be recorded on the disc are transmitted from the user's client to the disc publisher.
The control unit 40 refers to the relationship in Table 1 stored in the usage time storage unit 56 and extracts a writable drive (step 3). In the example of Table 1, since the drive 1 is processing a disk, it cannot be written. Therefore, in the step 3, empty drives 2 and 3 are selected.

Subsequently, in Step 5, the drive extracted in Step 3 with the minimum total usage time is selected. In this embodiment, the drive 3 is selected.
In step 7, an unrecorded disc is set in the drive 3 selected in step 5. Thereafter, data is written to an unrecorded disc. At this time, the data writing start time and its end time are recorded in a predetermined column in the line below the job of xxxx5677 in Table 3 (step 9).
. While the disc is being inserted into the tray, the status of the table 3 is “writing”.
When the data writing is completed, the drive is released (the status description in the table 3 is “completed”), and the disc is taken out by the transfer device 23 and sent to the label printer 27, where label printing is executed. (Steps 11 and 13).
The disc on which label printing has been completed is taken out from the label printer 27 and stored in the stock section 2
9 (step 15).

In step 17, the total usage time of each table in Table 1 is compared with the maintenance threshold time, and when the total usage time is greater than or equal to the maintenance threshold time in any one table (drive), In 19, a message indicating that the drive needs to be maintained (or replaced) is sent to the administrator client 10 in the form of an email.
The above operation is repeated until an end command is input to the disk publisher (
Step 21).
By executing such control, the total use time (total write time) of each drive is averaged, so that a specific drive is not used unevenly. As a result, the lifetime of the entire disk publisher apparatus is extended.

The present invention is not limited to the description of the embodiments and examples of the invention described above.
Various modifications may be included in the present invention as long as those skilled in the art can easily conceive without departing from the description of the scope of claims.

FIG. 1 shows a schematic configuration of a disk publisher according to an embodiment of the present invention. FIG. 2 is a front view of the disc publisher main body. FIG. 3 is a block diagram for explaining the control system of the disk publisher. FIG. 4 is a flowchart showing the operation of the disk publisher according to the embodiment of the present invention.

Explanation of symbols

1 disk publisher, 2 disk publisher itself, 3 writing disk,
4 control unit, 6 usage time storage unit, 9A, 9B, 9C user client,
10 client for administrator, 21 disk supply unit, 23 transfer device,
29 Stock part, 40 Control part

Claims (3)

A disk publisher comprising a plurality of write drives, a usage time counting device for counting the usage time of each drive;
A usage time storage device for storing the usage time for each drive;
A write control device that designates a drive having a minimum total use time with reference to the use time stored in the use time storage device;
A disk publisher characterized by comprising: The disk publisher according to claim 1, wherein the write control device designates a drive having a minimum total usage time among the drives in an empty state. The disk publisher according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the maintenance request is notified when the total use time for each drive exceeds a predetermined threshold.

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