JPH0233621A - Recording medium control system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To restore the control information at a high speed at the initialization by packing the update history information recorded in plural physical sectors of a recording medium into a single sector and recording said history information again via an update processing part. CONSTITUTION:The data and the control information as well as its update history information are stored in a memory medium 6. Then the medium 6 performs the recording/reproducing jobs via a recording medium control part 5. A conversion load part 3 restores the control information based on the update history information and stores this restored information into an internal memory 2. Based on said restored information, a data control part 1 instructs the recording/reproducing actions of data and the restored control information is processed by an update processing part 4. In other words, the part 4 packs those update history information recorded in plural physical sectors of the medium 6 into a single sector and records said information again.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a storage medium used as an external storage device for a computer, and particularly to a data management system for a storage medium in which seek time is a problem.

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, rewritable magnetic storage media such as floppy disks have been used as external storage devices, but in recent years write-once media such as write-once optical disks have also begun to be used. Particularly with such portable media, in order to take advantage of its portability, management information for data within the medium is often recorded in the storage medium at the same time as the data.

This kind of management information is frequently updated as data is added, etc., so if the entire updated management information is written back to the medium one by one, the capacity efficiency of the medium will deteriorate. Therefore, the following management method is generally used. Updates to management information are recorded in the medium in the form of update history information that shows the changes, or in the form of difference information only for the updated parts, and are stored in the internal storage device (memory or The latest management information is read into the internal storage device (memory and its auxiliary storage medium), and the latest management information is restored into the internal storage device by referring to the contents of update history information and difference information.

Furthermore, such a management method is sometimes used not only for write-once media but also for rewritable optical discs and the like where the medium may deteriorate due to frequent rewriting. An example of a management method using such update history information is introduced below.

(1) Alternate Sector Method This method is used as a compatible method that allows the operating system to handle write-once storage media in the same way as magnetic media by bringing the management method of magnetic media to write-once storage media.

For example, there is an example of implementation in a general-purpose operating system such as MS-DO3 (Operating 7 system/registered trademark developed by Microsoft Corporation). M
In S-DO3, magnetic media is divided into blocks of fixed physical size called clusters, and FAT (Flle
, A11ocatlon Table) to manage usage status and continuity with data between other clusters for each cluster. Recording and reproduction from the MS-DO 3 to the magnetic medium is instructed by the cluster number assigned to this cluster. In the alternate sector system, a conversion table in which each cluster number records the correspondence with recording sectors in the optical disk is provided as management information, and is read out into memory and managed at the time of initial setting.

In response to a playback instruction using a cluster number from MS-DO8, this conversion table is used to read out the sector on the optical disk where data is actually recorded, and instructs to rewrite to the cluster where data has already been recorded. If this occurs, a new replacement sector is allocated and recorded on the optical disk, the conversion destination of the corresponding cluster number in the conversion table in memory is rewritten to this new sector, and the changes in this conversion table are transferred to the storage medium. The history information shown is recorded.

(2) HSF compatible method H3P (High
Sierra Format: Reference Standard Egemny 119 Volume Antosdracture
of CD-ROM for Information Silon Interchange (Standard ECMA-1
19Volume and file 5trect
reof CD-ROM for Information
on Interchange)). H3P
is a 5.25-inch playback-only optical disc (CD-RO
M) is a standard logical format for managing the directory structure using directory files.
Considering the slow sorting time of OM, a directory collective management table called a path table has been introduced.

A method to achieve compatibility with this HSF file system on write-once optical disks has been proposed as a compatibility method (References: Information Processing Society of Japan 36th National Convention, 4S-
Storage management system for write-once optical discs that achieves compatibility with 6rCD-ROM (HSF) on general-purpose O8 1) J, 4
Compatible with S-7rCD-ROM (HSF) for general purpose 08
-Storage management method for write-once optical discs realized with L 2)
). In this method, a path table, which is management information, is restored and managed in memory at the time of initial setting, and information on changes to the path table is recorded as history information in a write-once storage medium.

(3) Document data management method using search information In a document filing system using a write-once storage medium, document data is registered on an optical disk, and search information such as keywords to be added to this document is also recorded on the optical disk. However, a method is adopted in which documents are managed using this search information as management information. In this method, during initial settings, the search information is read into memory as management information for document data in the medium, and the document data is managed. . Information on changes, deletions, etc. of search information after initial settings is provided in the form below.
It is recorded in the medium as layer information.

Problem history information and difference information that the invention attempts to solve are recorded each time management information is updated, and are also recorded at different timings.

For this reason, in a storage medium that is limited to recording in units of physical sectors, especially in write-once storage media that cannot be rewritten, historical information is scattered across a large number of recorded physical/physical sector media.

As a method for suppressing this scattering, a method has been proposed in which history information for several times is recorded in an internal storage medium and recorded all at once when the storage medium is replaced.

However, with this method, the latest management information and its history information in the internal storage medium are not reflected (not recorded) in the storage medium in the case of an unexpected system down, so the data and management information in the storage medium are Inconsistency occurs and data becomes unreadable the next time it is used, leading to serious reliability problems.

Therefore, in the conventional method, it is necessary to read all of the many physical sectors in which such history information is recorded during initial settings. This causes a significant impact on the restoration processing time for management information.

However, history information is usually much smaller than the physical sector size of a write-once storage medium.

For example, in the alternate sector system, 10 bytes per change in one alternate sector is sufficient. However, in write-once optical discs, the physical sector size, which is the smallest unit of recording and playback, is 512 bytes (IKB)! = ffl It is often much larger than history information. Therefore, if tens to hundreds of pieces of history information are packed and recorded in one physical sector, the overhead required to read the history information when restoring the management information at the time of initial settings can be reduced, and the restoration processing speed can be reduced. can be significantly improved.

An object of the present invention is to provide a storage medium management system that can reduce the above-mentioned overhead and significantly improve restoration processing speed.

Means for Solving the Problems In order to solve the above problems, the present invention provides a storage medium that records data, management information, and update history information on the same medium, and a storage medium control unit that performs recording and reproduction on this storage medium. a converting/loading unit that restores management information using the update history information; an internal storage device that stores the restored management information; and an instruction to record and reproduce data using the restored management information. The update processing unit includes a data management unit and an update processing unit that processes restored management information, and the update processing unit packs update history information recorded in a plurality of physical sectors of the storage medium into one sector and re-records the same. We have a mechanism to do this.

In addition, the above-mentioned update processing unit and conversion load unit are replaced by an update processing unit that has a mechanism for backing up management information restored in the internal storage device at a certain point in time into a storage medium, and It is also possible to configure the conversion load section to have a mechanism for restoring the latest management information from the history information after backup.

In the present invention, by packing and recording the history information recorded in multiple sectors by the update processing unit into one physical sector, or by backing up the management information at a certain point, the management information reproduction by the conversion loading unit is performed. The overhead required to read the time history information is 1! This makes it possible to speed up the process of restoring management information.

Embodiment 1 FIG. 1 shows the basic configuration of an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG.
5 to 5 are explanatory diagrams of the same embodiment.

In FIG. 1, 10 is a storage medium management unit, 1 is a data management unit, and 2 is an internal storage device that stores management information for managing data in the storage medium.Normally, an internal memory is used, but the management information is If the storage size is particularly large, an auxiliary storage medium such as a hard disk may be used for swap purposes. 3 is a conversion load unit that reads management information and its history information recorded in the storage medium and restores it to the internal storage device 2; 4 is an update unit that records history information distributed in multiple sectors in packed form; A processing section, 5 a storage medium control means for recording and reproducing information on a storage medium, and 6 a storage medium showing the data arrangement therein.

The thick solid line in FIG. 1 shows the instructions and data flow when the history information of the update processing section 4 is compiled, and the thin solid line shows the data flow when the management information is restored by the conversion load section 3 at the time of initial setting. There is.

In the fourth embodiment, a write-once optical disk, which is a storage medium in which the use of such a management method has a particularly large effect, will be described below as an example of the storage medium.

Figure 3 shows management information (hereinafter referred to as
FIG. 4 shows an example of a conversion table (abbreviated as a conversion table), and FIG. 4 shows a schematic diagram of a physical sector 40 in which individual history information is recorded for each item.

In FIG. 3, 31 is a cluster number, 32 is a physical sector number, and this conversion table is initially restored and loaded into the internal storage device 2 at the time of setting. The cluster number 31 is a logical address used by the data management unit 1 to identify a recording instruction to the optical disc 6, and the recording sector number, which is an actual address within the optical disc, is recorded in the physical sector number 32. For example, it shows that the contents of cluster number 13 are actually recorded in physical sector number 01FF'. A reproduction instruction from the data management section 1 is converted into a physical sector number 32 using this conversion table, and the actual recording position is accessed. In the case of a recording instruction, a new physical sector is allocated within the optical disk, and the conversion table in the internal storage device 2 is rewritten so that the corresponding cluster number in the conversion table points to this new physical sector number.

In addition, the history information representing the rewriting contents of the conversion table is stored on the optical disk 6.
(For example, the shoe and layer information will be as shown in FIG. 4, 41).

Since the conversion table itself is managed in the latest state in the internal storage device 2, it is not necessary to record the conversion information in the storage medium 6 every time it is changed, and it is not necessary to record the conversion information in the storage medium 6 when changing the storage medium 6 or when the system power is turned off. It is possible to record them all at once, such as when the data is dropped, but in an unexpected case such as a system failure or power failure, the conversion table in the internal storage medium 2 will not be reflected on the optical disc, and the data on the optical disc will be There are many problems with reliability, such as discrepancies between data and management information, making the storage medium unreadable the next time it is used. Therefore, in order to prevent this problem, in a general system, a system is adopted in which the conversion table is updated in the internal storage device and history information is also recorded on the optical disk at the same time. However, since writing is performed in units of physical sectors on normal optical discs, this kind of history information is recorded separately in each physical sector, which causes the following problems. do.

If the history information is recorded in a large number of physical sectors, the number of sectors that must be read when restoring the initial setting conversion table becomes very large, which causes an increase in processing time. In particular, in a storage medium such as an optical disk, which requires a rotational wait and is said to have a slower seek time than other storage media, the overhead required to read this large number of sectors becomes extremely large. If the sectors in which history information is recorded are recorded continuously, it is possible to reduce the read overhead somewhat by reading multiple sectors at once, but this method requires a large capacity for buffering. Since it requires memory, it is often difficult to implement or its effectiveness is limited due to memory constraints.

In this embodiment, by collectively recording individual history information recorded in multiple physical sectors in one physical sector (hereinafter abbreviated as puncture history information sector), the processing speed at the time of initial setting is increased. prevent a decline in

An example of this pack history information sector is shown at 50 in FIG.

51 is a collection of history information 41 recorded in a plurality of physical sectors, and 52 is position information that records the position of the next history information (history information and pack history information sectors are recorded at consecutive addresses). (If the history information contains a pointer to the next history information, it is not necessary to have information like 52).

Furthermore, if a certain address range is provided for recording individual history information and puncture history information sectors and the information is recorded in consecutive sectors, the read overhead can be further improved.

As an example of such a pack history information sector, for example, in the alternate sector method of this embodiment, it is sufficient to have a cluster number and a physical sector number of 4 bytes each, and when the physical sector of the storage medium is 512 bytes, This means that more than 60 pieces of track/layer information can be recorded in the pack history information sector.

Therefore, a simple calculation shows that the overhead required for sector reproduction during initial settings is 1760 or less +i! I can do it.

In addition to the method using this pack history information sector, it is also possible to record the latest conversion table restored in the internal storage device 2 at a certain point in time in the storage medium as a backup form (hereinafter abbreviated as sort conversion table). ) There is also a way to do it. In this case, some header information such as the size of the conversion table may be added.

When recording this sort conversion table and changing the conversion table later,
History information starting from this sort conversion table is recorded.

During initial setup in this case, this sort conversion table is first read out, then the puncture history information sector is read out, and finally the individual history information that has not yet been packed is sequentially read out to restore the management table in internal storage. .

In this embodiment, as shown in FIG.
If you use the paging map 7, which treats the instruction to a virtual logical address and converts it to the actual recording position within the storage medium, you can transfer the data to the partition history information sector, sector where individual history information is recorded, etc. Even if the recording position of each sort conversion table is set to a certain recording address range, there is no need to reserve the entire set area on the storage medium in advance, and the area can be changed dynamically depending on the usage situation to save the area. It can be mapped onto an optical disk, so
Area management becomes easier - 11. Recording area! One generation is gone. It is unclear how much recording address range is required depending on the usage situation, but with this method, even if you set a large address range, there is no wasted space (for example,
The recording address range of the pack history information sector is 10.
Even if addresses for 000 sectors are set, there is no need to reserve 10000 sectors on the optical disk.)

Embodiment 2 FIG. 6 shows a configuration diagram when the present invention is applied to an H8F compatible system. In FIG. 6, 10 is a storage medium management unit;
2 is a data management unit, and 2 is an internal storage device, which includes a path table (hereinafter abbreviated as PT) 21 and a directory file address conversion table (hereinafter referred to as PT), which are management information for realizing compatibility with H3P. (abbreviated as DT)22
is stored. 3 is a conversion loading unit that reads and reproduces the PT 21 and DT 22 from the history information in the optical disk 6;
5 is an update processing unit that records history information distributed and recorded in a plurality of sectors in a summarized form; 5 is a storage medium control unit that performs recording and reproduction on the storage medium; 6 is a write-once optical disc and data arrangement therein; Reference numeral 7 denotes a paging machine for dynamically mapping the logical address handled by the storage medium management unit 10 to the physical address on the optical disk into page m. The dashed arrows in FIG. 6 indicate the access paths during playback of management information and data files (the solid lines are the same as in FIGS. 1 and 2 of the first embodiment).

DT22 is a directory file (hereinafter abbreviated as DF)
This table was introduced in order to update efficiently. This was introduced in order to avoid the problem when updating the DF, which will be explained next. ).

H3P's IJ groove structure records logical block numbers, which are the positional information of the parent directory DF and subdirectory l)F, in the DF. The file system of H3P (corresponding to the playback processing function of the data management section 1 in FIG. 6) refers to the hierarchical structure between the B-Lefts I and U using the position information in I)F. Since the write-once optical disc 6 cannot be rewritten, updating of l) F in the case of adding a file is performed by additionally writing to another unused block. Therefore, the address of the DF will change. However, in the H3P DF, the parent directory DF and subdirectory DF are
Since the address before change is recorded as location information for F, in order to change the address, these D
F also needs to be updated in a chain, and a problem arises in that updates to DF spread to the entire directory. Therefore, as a method to solve this problem, a virtual address is allocated as the address of the directory, and the reference relationship between directories is configured by this virtual DF address. Actually D
The correspondence with the real address where F is recorded is recorded in l) T. If this method is used, even if the DF is updated, the virtual DF address will not change, so all you need to do is rewrite the address in the DT22 to point to the address where the updated DF is recorded. This makes it possible to efficiently update the DF without causing any problems.

When adding files or creating directories, the management information PT and DT are updated using the DT in the internal storage device 2.
22 and PT21, and records history information in the optical disk 6. At the time of initial setting, it is necessary for the conversion load unit 3 to read a large number of sectors in which history information of both tables is recorded and restore DT22 and PT21. This becomes overhead.

In this embodiment, the update processing unit packs the history information of these two tables recorded in separate blocks and records them all in one sector, thereby speeding up the restoration process of both tables at the time of initial setting. (If there is a flag in the history information that identifies whether the history information is from one table or another, it is possible to mix the history information, and as in the case of this example, it is possible to compare the history information like PT history information. It is possible to efficiently pack historical information with a large amount of physical data (1) and relatively small amount of historical information such as DT historical information into the same sector). In addition, at the time when a specified number of history information is created, or especially at the time when an instruction is issued from the data management section, the PT21 and DT22 in the internal storage device 2 are recorded on the optical disc 6 in a form of backup (as in the first embodiment). (corresponding to a sort conversion table), it is possible to further speed up this processing.

Effects of the Invention According to the present invention, in a management system for a storage medium that records management information and its history information, it is possible to realize high-speed management information restoration processing at the time of initial setting, and to provide a document filing system in which such a management system is used. It can be expected to have an effect on the use of computers' internal storage devices.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is a block diagram of one embodiment of the present invention when used in the alternate sector system, Fig. 2 is a block diagram showing a modification of the same embodiment, and Figs. 3 to 5 are explanations of the embodiment. Figure 6 is H
FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of an example of the implementation of the present invention when used in an 8F compatible system. 10---Storage medium management section, 1...Data management section, 2
-・Φ internal storage device, 3・ll11 conversion o - code part, 4
meeting φ/update processing unit, 5...storage medium control means, 6...
Fist storage medium, 7ψ... Paging Manobu, 3011@...
Conversion table, 31--cluster number, 32-ψ-physical sector number, 41--Φ history information, 42-skewer history information, 4
3.Fist/next position information, 21.OS path table, 22.
φφ directory file address conversion table. Name of agent: Patent attorney Shigetaka Kurino Account book: 1 name

Claims (6)

[Claims] (1) A storage medium that records data, management information, and its update history information on the same medium, a storage medium control unit that performs recording and playback on the storage medium, and a conversion that restores the management information using the update history information. It includes a load section, an internal storage device that stores the restored management information, a data management section that instructs recording and playback of data using the restored management information, and an update processing section that processes the restored management information. . A storage medium management system, wherein the update processing unit has a mechanism for packing update history information recorded in a plurality of physical sectors of the storage medium into one sector and rerecording the same. (2) The recording address of at least one type of sector, which is a sector in which history information is recorded or a sector in which packing and re-recording is performed, is set to a certain continuous address range. storage media management system. (3) A storage medium that records data, management information, and its update history information on the same medium, a storage medium control unit that performs recording and playback on the storage medium, and a conversion that restores the management information using the update history information. It includes a load section, an internal storage device that stores the restored management information, a data management section that instructs recording and playback of data using the restored management information, and an update processing section that processes the restored management information. , the update processing section has a mechanism for backing up the management information restored in the internal storage device into the storage medium at a certain point in time, and the conversion loading section uses the backed up management information as a starting point, A storage medium management system characterized by having a mechanism for restoring the latest management information from history information after backup. (4) The update processing unit has a mechanism for packing the update history information recorded in a plurality of physical sectors of the storage medium into one sector and re-recording the same. storage media processing system. (5) Claim 3, characterized in that the recording address of at least one type of sector, which is a sector in which history information is recorded or a sector in which backup management information is recorded, is set in a certain continuous address range. A storage media management system as described. (6) The recording address of at least one sector, which is a sector in which history information is recorded, a sector in which packing and re-recording is performed, or a sector in which backup management information is recorded, is set in a certain continuous address range. A storage medium management system according to claim 4.