JPH05282773A - Rewritable optical disk system - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To decrease the frequencies of operations and make an external storage device small by synchronizing the operation for loading an optical disk medium in an input/output device for data reading and the operation for loading the optical disk medium for writing with each other. CONSTITUTION:Requests to read and write data on the optical disk are generated in parallel by plural optical disk data processing programs 10. The request to read the data is generated and sent by the program 10 to a data input/output program 5, which requests the optical disk medium 2 to be loaded in an optical disk input/output part 4. A control part 3 takes the medium 2 out of an optical medium storage part 1 and loads it in the input/output part 4. The request to write the data is generated and sent by the program 10 to a write data control program 7. At this time, the reading and writing operations are controlled by a control means and synchronized with each other to decrease the frequencies of the operations. Then the time for input to and output from the medium 2 can be shortened without requiring many expensive external storage devices.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a rewritable optical disc system for storing and managing information such as documents and drawings using a collective type optical disc device having a plurality of rewritable optical disc media as recording media.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Currently, optical disc media used in optical disc systems are classified into a write-once type and a rewritable type. In the write-once type, once written data, the data cannot be rewritten after that, and can only be read. On the other hand, the rewritable type can be rewritten many times like a magnetic disk. In addition, there are a manual type and a collective type in the optical disc devices that access the optical disc medium. The manual type is one in which an optical disk medium is manually loaded into an input / output device. In the collective type, a plurality of optical disk media are stored in a storage unit in advance, and when an access request is made, the target media are automatically loaded into the input / output device. In the conventional optical disc system, the write-once type was used for the optical disc medium and the manual type was used for the optical disc device, but in recent years, as the amount of information to be stored and managed such as documents and drawings has increased, the rewritable type for the optical disc medium and the optical disc device have been assembled. Molds have come into use.

FIG. 4 shows the operation of a conventional general collective type optical disk device. The operation of this device will be described below with reference to FIG. When you accept the access request (step 3
1), the device checks whether or not the input / output device has the target optical disk medium (step 32), and if not, checks whether or not there is a free input / output device (step 33). ,
Return the optical disk medium of the non-operating I / O device to the storage section (step 34), load the target optical disk medium into the input / output device (step 35), access the target optical disk (step 36), and request Return results to (step 3
7). In a normal optical disc system, since a plurality of access requests for data on different optical disc media are processed, there is a high probability that the target optical disc medium will not be found in the process of step 32 and the free I / O device will be found in the process of step 33. Often, all the processing of steps 34-36 will be performed.

Among the operations of the above-described conventional collective type optical disk device, steps 34 and 35 require several seconds to several tens of seconds because the optical disk medium is transferred. Further, the rewritable optical disk medium requires 5 to 20 times as long as input and output as compared with the magnetic disk device. Therefore, there is a demand for speeding up data input / output and medium loading. Conventionally, in order to reduce the data input / output time and the optical disk medium loading time,
When the read data is stored in the magnetic disk device or semiconductor disk device, and if there is a read request for the same data, the data read time is shortened by reading from the magnetic disk device or semiconductor disk device instead of from the optical disk device. The method of doing was adopted. According to FIG.
The outline of the operation of this system will be described.

When the access request is accepted (step 31),
It is checked whether or not the target data is on the high speed file device (step 39). If there is target data, the data is accessed (step 40) and the result is returned to the request source (step 37). If the target data is not found in the check in step 39, the optical disk medium is transferred and the read data is stored in the high speed file device in step 38 corresponding to steps 32 to 36 in FIG. 4 described above (step 41). ).
After that, the result is returned to the request source (step 37). This method is effective in a system that frequently accesses the same data, but is not so effective in a normal optical disk system because it processes a plurality of access requests for data on different optical disk media. Further, in a system in which further shortening of input / output time is required, data expected to be read / written is transferred in advance to a magnetic disk device or a semiconductor disk device, and the read / write request for the data is made to those devices. A method of executing the above and transferring data from those devices to the optical disk device at a fixed interval or at the end of service has also been adopted.

[0006]

However, in the above-mentioned prior art, since it is difficult to determine the data to be read and written in advance, in order to satisfy the demand, a large number of expensive magnetic disk devices and semiconductor disk devices are used. There is a problem in that much time is required for data transfer from the optical disk device to those devices and from the device to the optical disk device. The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and an object of the present invention is to solve the above-mentioned problems in the prior art, to eliminate the need for a large number of expensive external storage devices, and to input / output time to / from an optical disk medium. An object of the present invention is to provide a rewritable optical disc system using a collective type optical disc device capable of shortening the time.

[0007]

The above object of the present invention is to provide an optical disk storage unit for storing a plurality of rewritable optical disk media, a plurality of optical disk input / output units for reading / writing data on the rewritable optical disk medium, and a read / write unit. In a rewritable optical disc system having an optical disc medium control unit for extracting a rewritable optical disc medium from the optical disc storage unit according to a request and loading it in the optical disc input / output unit, writing (writing) onto the rewritable optical disc medium Means for managing the requested data for each write destination optical disk medium on the storage means, and at the time of the read request, the data is input from the rewritable optical disk medium loaded in the rewritable optical disk input / output unit, and the management means Of the data managed by the It is achieved by a rewritable optical disc system characterized by comprising means for outputting the data requested teeth).

[0008]

In the rewritable optical disk system (hereinafter, "rewritable optical disk medium" is also referred to simply as "optical disk medium") according to the present invention, in the collective optical disk device, the optical disk medium is an input / output device. By synchronizing the operation of loading the optical disk medium with the reading and writing of data, it becomes possible to reduce the frequency of the operation of loading the optical disk medium into the input / output device, and as a result,
It is possible to realize an optical disc system using a collective type optical disc device which can shorten the input / output time to / from the optical disc medium without requiring a large number of expensive external storage devices.
Also, in the following description, writing on the optical disk medium
The (so-called “write-out”) request is simply referred to as a “write request”.

[0009]

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described in detail with reference to the drawings. FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of a collective type optical disc system according to an embodiment of the present invention. In the figure, 1 is an optical disk medium housing unit for housing a plurality of optical disk media 2, 3 is an optical disk medium control unit, 4 is an optical disk input / output unit, 5 is a data input / output program, 6 is a data buffer unit, and 7 is write data management. A program, 8 is a write data buffer section, 9 is a write data management list section, and 10 is an optical disk data processing program. Requests for reading and writing data on the optical disc are issued in parallel from a plurality of optical disc data processing programs 10. The data read request is issued from the optical disk data processing program 10 to the data input / output program 5. The data input / output program 5 requests the optical disc medium control unit 3 to load the optical disc medium in which the requested data is stored in the optical disc input / output unit 4.

The optical disc medium control unit 3 extracts the optical disc medium 2 from the optical disc medium housing unit 1 and loads it into the optical disc input / output unit 4. Data input / output program 5
Reads data from the loaded optical disk medium and stores it in the data buffer unit 6. The optical disk data processing program 10 processes the data stored in the data buffer unit 6. The data write request is issued from the optical disk data processing program 10 to the write data management program 7. Write data management program 7
Stores the requested data in the write data buffer unit 8 and sets the information related to the data in the write data management list 9, and the optical disk data processing program 10
Notify that the write operation is completed. Thereby, the optical disk data processing program 10 continues the next processing.

In the above-mentioned write operation, after reading the data and storing it in the data buffer section 6, the data input / output program 5 confirms with the write data management program 7 whether there is a write request to the loaded optical disk medium.
The write data management program 7 refers to the write data management list 9 and transfers the data from the write data buffer unit 8 to the data input / output program 5 if there is a write request. The data input / output program 5 writes the transferred data on the optical disc medium 2. When the system is terminated other than normal termination, the write data management program 7 checks the write data buffer section 8 for unwritten data, and if there is unwritten data, the write data management list is reproduced. FIG. 3 shows a configuration example of the write data buffer section 8 and the write data management list 9 shown in FIG.

In the figure, 11 is write data in the write data buffer unit 8, 12 is an optical disk medium identifier in the write data management list 9, and 13 is an address in the write data buffer unit 8 of write data. The write data is stored in the data buffer unit 8 in the order in which the requests are issued, and its address 13 is linked to the identifier 23 of the storage destination optical disk medium. The data stored in the write data buffer unit 8 is transferred to the optical disc medium 2 and then deleted from the write data management list 9. Figure 1
A characteristic operation flow of this embodiment described above is shown in FIG. In the collective optical disc system according to the present embodiment, when an access request is accepted (step 31), it is checked whether the access request is read or write (step 51). If the access request is written, the target data is written in the write data buffer unit 8 Stored in
After (step 52), the result is returned to the request source (step 37).

If the result of determination in step 51 is that the data has been read, the optical disk medium 2 is transferred (step 3
8, i.e. steps 32-36 in FIG. Next, it is checked whether or not there is write data for the loaded optical disc medium 2 (step 53). If there is write data, the write data is stored in the optical disc medium 2 and the result is returned to the request source. (Step 37) If there is no write data, the result is returned to the request source (Step 37), and the process ends. According to the above embodiment, the function of the write data management program 7 enables the optical disc data processing program 10 to complete the data writing process without loading the optical disc medium 2 and writing to the optical disc medium 2.

Further, by the function of the data input / output program 5, the optical disk medium 2 is written a plurality of times for writing data.
Since the loading operation can be completed once, the output time to the optical disk medium 2 can be shortened to the same level as the output time to the magnetic disk device. It is needless to say that the above embodiment shows one example of the present invention, and the present invention should not be limited to this. For example, the functions of the processing programs shown in the above embodiments can be appropriately combined and their arrangements can be changed.

[0015]

As described above in detail, according to the present invention, rewriting using the collective type optical disk device which does not require a large number of expensive external storage devices and can shorten the input / output time to / from the optical disk medium. Type optical disk system can be realized.

[0016]

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an operation flow chart showing an outline of operation of a collective optical disc system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of a collective optical disc system according to an embodiment.

3 is a diagram showing a configuration example of a write data buffer section 8 and a write data management list 9 shown in FIG.

FIG. 4 is an operation flow diagram (1) of a conventional general collective-type optical disc device.

FIG. 5 is an operational flow diagram (2) of a conventional general collective type optical disc device.

[Explanation of symbols]

1: Optical disk medium storage unit, 2: Optical disk medium, 3:
Optical disc medium control unit, 4: Optical disc input / output unit, 5:
Data input / output program, 6: data buffer section, 7:
Write data management program, 8: write data buffer section, 9: write data management list section, 10: optical disk data processing program, 11: write data in write data buffer section, 12: optical disk medium identifier in write data management list, 13 : Write data buffer address in write data.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. An optical disc storage unit for storing a plurality of rewritable optical disc media, and a plurality of optical disc input / output units for reading and writing data on the rewritable optical disc medium.
In a rewritable optical disc system having an optical disc medium control unit for extracting a rewritable optical disc medium from the optical disc storage unit in response to a read / write request and loading the rewritable optical disc medium in the optical disc input / output unit, writing (writing to the rewritable optical disc medium ) Means for managing the requested data on the storage means for each write destination optical disk medium, and at the time of a read request, input data from the rewritable optical disk medium loaded in the rewritable optical disk input / output unit,
A rewritable optical disc system comprising a unit that outputs, of the data managed by the management unit, data requested to be written (written out) on the rewritable optical disc medium.