JPH0814934B2 - Disk controller for controlling sector replacement management - Google Patents

Description

The present invention relates to a disk controller for controlling replacement management of a sector for allocating a substitute sector to a sector in a replacement area of a hard disk for a defective sector in a general area of a hard disk. Speed up the process of notifying the sector allocation status to the upper level,
Management data storage means that collectively records information on the allocation status of alternate sectors and read / write of alternate sector allocation information to the management data recording means for the purpose of not affecting online processing In addition, the recording information is updated for each allocation process of the replacement sector, and the replacement sector management control means is provided for transferring the recording information to the host in response to the information read request from the host.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a device for controlling replacement management of sectors of a hard disk device.

In the hard disk device, from the viewpoint of relieving defects on the storage medium, a spare replacement area is provided on the medium, and the defective sector in the general area is
The substitute sector is assigned to the sector in the replacement area.

Further, after all the sectors in the replacement area have been assigned to the failure sector, if a failure sector further occurs in the general area, the failure sector cannot be assigned to the replacement area, which makes access inaccessible. Therefore, in order to prevent such a situation, it is necessary to monitor the usage status of the alternate sector by software and determine the replacement time of the disk unit.

[Conventional technology]

Conventionally, the method of managing the usage status of the replacement sector is to read the allocation status of all the sectors in the replacement area, and thereby count the number of sectors in which a flag bit indicating that the allocation unit has been allocated is set. . Then, the counting result is recorded in a specific address in the general area of the main storage device or the disk unit so that the host system can judge the replacement time of the disk unit from the recorded contents.

[Problems to be solved by the invention]

In the conventional alternate sector management method of the disk unit as described above, when the host device wants to know the allocation status of the alternate sector, the host device issues a command for reading allocation information to the disk control device, which causes Since all sectors are sequentially searched from the top address to obtain information on the allocation status of the replacement sectors, in the case of a large-capacity disk unit with a total of thousands to tens of thousands of replacement sectors, the allocation status is read. It takes several tens of seconds to several minutes, and other access to the disk unit is disabled during that time, which has a problem that the online processing is greatly affected.

DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION The present invention solves the above-mentioned problems, and speeds up the process of notifying the upper level of the alternate sector allocation status, and controls the sector alternate management so as not to affect the online process. The purpose is to provide.

[Means for solving problems]

FIG. 1 shows a principle block diagram of a disk control device for controlling the replacement management of sectors according to the present invention.

In the figure, a disk control device for allocating a substitute sector to a sector in a replacement area for a defective sector in a general area of a disk unit is a replacement sector management control means 10 and a management for recording information on allocation status of the replacement sector. The alternate sector management control means 10 is provided with data recording means 11 and enables the read / write of the alternate sector allocation information to the management data recording means 11 and updates the recorded information every time the alternate sector is allocated. In addition, it has a function of outputting the updated record information to the upper layer in response to the allocation information reading request from the upper layer.

[Work]

In the present invention, when a substitute sector is assigned to a sector in the replacement area for the faulty sector, the replacement sector management control means 10 adjusts the recorded contents of the management data recording means 11 to the sector usage status in the replacement area. Updated,
The latest replacement sector allocation status will always be maintained. Therefore, if there is a request to read the allocation information from the upper layer, the data in the management data recording means 11 will be read and output to the upper layer.

Therefore, according to the present invention, it is possible to speed up the process of notifying the upper rank of the alternate sector allocation status, and to prevent the online process from being affected.

〔Example〕

 Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 2 shows an overall configuration diagram of an embodiment to which a disk controller for controlling sector replacement management of the present invention is applied.

In the figure, a central controller 20 has functions such as arithmetic control, common bus control, and memory access control, and serves as a logical center of a computer.

The main storage device 21 stores a program necessary for calculation and control and data such as a calculation result of the central control device 20, and is connected to the central control device 20.

The channel device 22 includes the central processing unit 20 and the main storage device.
Data is transferred between the peripheral device 21 and a peripheral device. A disk controller 24 is connected to the channel device 22 via a common bus 23, and a hard disk device 26 is connected to the disk controller 24 via a bus 25. It is connected.

The hard disk device 26 is used as an auxiliary for the main storage device 21, and its storage area is the third
As shown in the figure, a general area accessible from the higher-level central processing unit 20, a replacement area serving as a substitute sector for a failed sector in the general area, and a read / write test for the normality of the controller, diagnosis, It consists of a maintenance area that stores other data.

The disk controller 24 is connected to the microprocessor 24a for controlling the whole and the microprocessor 24a through the internal bus 24b, and the allocation processing program of the replacement sector, the management program and the replacement sector using the usage status of the replacement sector. ROM 24c for storing a program for updating the management data of RAM, RAM 24d for storing the calculation result in the microprocessor 24a and other data, and the connection between the internal bus 24b and the common bus 23, the channel device 22 and the microprocessor. An internal register 24e for exchanging data with the 24a, an input / output control circuit 24g controlled by the microprocessor 24a and connected to the internal bus 24b via a bidirectional driver 24f, and an input / output control circuit 24g for the bus 25. The hard disk drive 26, which is connected via the RAM 24d, and the FIFO (File Host-in / first-out buffer 24h, and DMA (direct transfer) between the FIFO buffer 24h and the host main memory 21.
Higher-order DM that controls transfer in memory access mode
A control circuit 24i, a lower side DMA control circuit 24j for controlling the transfer of the DMA mode between the FIFO buffer 24h and the hard disk device 26, the RAM 24d and the upper main memory 21 to the FIFO.
It is composed of a selector 24k and the like for selecting data to be transferred to the buffer 24h.

In FIG. 2, the management program and update processing program in the microprocessor 24a and ROM 24c of the disk controller 24 correspond to the alternate sector management control means 10 in FIG. Further, the management data recording means 11 of FIG. 1 is configured by utilizing a part of the maintenance area of the hard disk device 26.

Next, the operation of the present embodiment configured as described above will be described as the fourth operation.
Description will be made with reference to the flowcharts of FIGS.

FIG. 4 shows a flow of the alternate sector allocation process. When an interrupt occurs from the upper central processing unit 20 to the disk control unit 24, the interrupt information is stored in the internal register.
Written in 24c, which causes microprocessor 24a
Accepts interrupt information and starts. And step
At 100, it is determined whether or not it is a replacement sector allocation instruction.
Here, when the result is "NO", analysis of other interrupt causes is executed.
If it is determined that the replacement sector is assigned,
The address of the general sector in which the failure has occurred is specified to activate the replacement allocation instruction, and the process proceeds to the next step 101, where the replacement source format is executed for the specified general sector. That is, a flag that the replacement source of the general sector is a failure and a flag that the replacement allocation is being performed are set, and the address of the replacement destination for the replacement area is written in the allocation unit.
Then, in the next step 102, the formatting of the replacement destination is executed for the empty sectors in the replacement area. In other words, set a flag that it is the replacement destination address for the replacement source,
Write the replacement source address in the allocation section. Thereafter, in step 103, the data from the higher order is written in the sector of the replacement destination instead of the general sector in which the failure has occurred.

At this time, the upper DMA control circuit 24i writes the data from the upper side to the FIFO buffer 24h through the selector 24k, and then the data in the FIFO buffer 24h is transferred to the lower DMA side.
The data is written in the alternate area of the hard disk device 26 by the control circuit 24j through the input / output control circuit 24g.

Further, with the completion of the allocation processing of the replacement sector, in the next step 104, the management data updating processing of the maintenance area is executed.

 FIG. 5 shows a flow of management data update processing.

In the figure, when the update processing program starts with the completion of the replacement sector allocation processing, first, the step
In 200, the microprocessor 24a is an input / output control circuit.
Issue a read command to 24g and input / output control circuit 24g
To start. Along with this, the input / output control circuit 24g reads out the management data recorded in the management data save area of the addressed maintenance area to the hard disk device 26, and at the same time, receives an instruction from the input / output control circuit 24g. By the lower DMA control circuit 24j which operates, read data from the disk is input / output control circuit 24g,
DMA transfer is performed to the FIFO buffer 24h through the selector 24k.
Then, in step 201, the microprocessor 24a
Checks the end status of the I / O control circuit to determine whether it ended normally. Here, when it is determined that the process has ended normally, the process proceeds to the next step 202, and the read data once written in the FIFO buffer 24h is transferred to the RAM 24d through the bidirectional driver 24f and the internal bus 24b by the lower DMA control circuit 24j.
DMA transfer to.

In the next step 203, the microprocessor 24a
RAM24d according to the update processing program stored in 4c
Rewrite the above transfer data to new data after the replacement assignment. When the management data update processing is completed, the update data in the RAM 24d is transferred to the FIFO buffer 24h through the internal bus 24b, the bidirectional driver 24f and the selector 24k (step 204). After that, when a write command is issued from the microprocessor 24a to the input / output control circuit 24g,
The input / output control circuit 24g is activated, and the lower DMA control circuit 24
j operates to write the updated data in the FIFO buffer 24h to the management data save area in the maintenance area of the hard disk device 26 (step 205). Then, the microprocessor 24a checks the termination status of the input / output control circuit 24g to check whether it has terminated normally (step 206). If normal termination, the update processing flow ends.

On the other hand, in steps 201 and 206, if it is determined that the end status of the input / output control circuit 24g is abnormal, the process proceeds to step 207 to analyze the error cause,
In the next step 208, it is determined whether or not to execute the retry, and when the retry is executed, the process returns to step 200. Further, if the error is not relieved even if the retry is executed, or if the retry is not executed, the error flag is set in the next step 209 to terminate abnormally.

Next, the management data recorded in the management data save area of the maintenance area, that is, the information on the replacement sector usage status such as the total number of sectors in the replacement area and the number of allocated replacement sectors allocated to the failed sector in the general area The case of transferring a read request from the central processing unit 20 will be described.

In this case, first, when the central processing unit 20 issues a read request command to the disk controller 24, the microprocessor 24a accepts the read request command and instructs the input / output control circuit 24g to perform read activation. Along with this, the management data recorded in the maintenance area of the hard disk device 26 is DMA-transferred to the FIFO buffer 24h by the lower DMA control circuit 24j. After that, the data in the FIFO buffer 24h is
DMA transfer to the central processing unit 20 is performed by the MA control circuit 24i.
This gives information on the usage of the replacement sector
It will be possible to notify upward in units of m sec.

In this embodiment as described above, the disk controller
The replacement sector management firmware collects the management data indicating the usage status of the replacement sectors such as the total number of sectors in the replacement area and the allocated replacement sectors from the allocation section of the general area and the replacement area to maintain the hard disk drive 26. It is recorded in the management data save area in the area, and the management data is updated every time the alternate sector allocation is performed, and is always held as the latest information. If the higher-level system wants to know, it only needs to issue the allocation information read request command from the higher-level central processing unit 20 to the disk control unit 24, and the notification process can be significantly speeded up compared with the conventional system.
It is possible to notify the upper layer of highly reliable replacement sector allocation information that does not affect online processing. Therefore,
It is possible to prevent inaccessibility and the like due to exhaustion of the alternate sector and to accurately determine the replacement time of the hard disk drive.

〔The invention's effect〕

As described above, according to the present invention, the replacement sector allocation status when a substitute sector is allocated to a sector in the replacement area for a failed sector in the general area is collectively saved in the management data area, and this management is performed. Since the data is updated and held in the new information, the notification processing can be speeded up for the request to read the alternate sector allocation information to the upper layer, and the notification processing can be prevented from affecting the online processing. .

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the principle of a disk control device for controlling sector replacement management according to the present invention. FIG. 2 is an overall configuration diagram of an embodiment to which the disk control device for controlling sector replacement management according to the present invention is applied. FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing a storage area state of the hard disk device, FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing an outline of alternate sector allocation processing in the embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing data update processing in the embodiment of the present invention. Is. In the figure, 10 is an alternate sector management control means, 11 is management data recording means, 20 is a central processing unit, 21 is a main memory device, 22 is a channel device, 24 is a disk control device, 24a is a microprocessor, 24c is ROM, 24d is a RAM, 24g is an input / output control circuit, 24h is a FIFO buffer, and 26 is a hard disk device.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A disk controller having a function of allocating a substitute sector to a sector in a replacement area of a hard disk for a failed sector in a general area of a hard disk, and managing to collectively record information on allocation status of the replacement sector. The data recording unit and the management data recording unit can read / write the alternate sector allocation information, update the recording information for each alternate sector allocation process, and write the recording information in response to an information read request from the host. A disk control device for controlling the replacement management of a sector, characterized by comprising replacement sector management control means for transferring to a higher level.