WO2007055925A2 - System and method for enhancing external storage - Google Patents
System and method for enhancing external storage Download PDFInfo
- Publication number
- WO2007055925A2 WO2007055925A2 PCT/US2006/041856 US2006041856W WO2007055925A2 WO 2007055925 A2 WO2007055925 A2 WO 2007055925A2 US 2006041856 W US2006041856 W US 2006041856W WO 2007055925 A2 WO2007055925 A2 WO 2007055925A2
- Authority
- WO
- WIPO (PCT)
- Prior art keywords
- controller
- firmware
- storage
- peripheral device
- hdds
- Prior art date
Links
Classifications
-
- G—PHYSICS
- G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
- G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
- G06F3/00—Input arrangements for transferring data to be processed into a form capable of being handled by the computer; Output arrangements for transferring data from processing unit to output unit, e.g. interface arrangements
- G06F3/06—Digital input from, or digital output to, record carriers, e.g. RAID, emulated record carriers or networked record carriers
- G06F3/0601—Interfaces specially adapted for storage systems
- G06F3/0628—Interfaces specially adapted for storage systems making use of a particular technique
- G06F3/0629—Configuration or reconfiguration of storage systems
- G06F3/0632—Configuration or reconfiguration of storage systems by initialisation or re-initialisation of storage systems
-
- G—PHYSICS
- G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
- G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
- G06F3/00—Input arrangements for transferring data to be processed into a form capable of being handled by the computer; Output arrangements for transferring data from processing unit to output unit, e.g. interface arrangements
- G06F3/06—Digital input from, or digital output to, record carriers, e.g. RAID, emulated record carriers or networked record carriers
- G06F3/0601—Interfaces specially adapted for storage systems
- G06F3/0602—Interfaces specially adapted for storage systems specifically adapted to achieve a particular effect
- G06F3/0604—Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. storage management
- G06F3/0607—Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. storage management by facilitating the process of upgrading existing storage systems, e.g. for improving compatibility between host and storage device
-
- G—PHYSICS
- G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
- G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
- G06F3/00—Input arrangements for transferring data to be processed into a form capable of being handled by the computer; Output arrangements for transferring data from processing unit to output unit, e.g. interface arrangements
- G06F3/06—Digital input from, or digital output to, record carriers, e.g. RAID, emulated record carriers or networked record carriers
- G06F3/0601—Interfaces specially adapted for storage systems
- G06F3/0602—Interfaces specially adapted for storage systems specifically adapted to achieve a particular effect
- G06F3/0626—Reducing size or complexity of storage systems
-
- G—PHYSICS
- G06—COMPUTING; CALCULATING OR COUNTING
- G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
- G06F3/00—Input arrangements for transferring data to be processed into a form capable of being handled by the computer; Output arrangements for transferring data from processing unit to output unit, e.g. interface arrangements
- G06F3/06—Digital input from, or digital output to, record carriers, e.g. RAID, emulated record carriers or networked record carriers
- G06F3/0601—Interfaces specially adapted for storage systems
- G06F3/0668—Interfaces specially adapted for storage systems adopting a particular infrastructure
- G06F3/0671—In-line storage system
- G06F3/0683—Plurality of storage devices
- G06F3/0689—Disk arrays, e.g. RAID, JBOD
Definitions
- USB or Firewire also referred to as IEEE 1394
- SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
- controllers include basic firmware in their controller itself with room for making enhancements. It is difficult to predict every application for the controller and so a way to enhance the controller to do new applications is provided by allowing these enhancements to reside on an EEPROM or like.
- One embodiment as described herein provides a system and method for enhancing external storage.
- One embodiment includes a controller of a peripheral device of a computer system.
- the controller provides access a storage medium of the peripheral device.
- the storage medium of the peripheral device includes a section of storage reserved for firmware of the peripheral device.
- a controller of a peripheral storage device of a computer system is to identify a presence of multiple hard disk drives (HDDs) and provide logical access to the multiple HDDs as a single HDD having a storage capacity greater than a storage capacity of any one of the multiple HDDs.
- HDDs hard disk drives
- Figure 2 illustrates an external storage configuration in accordance with one embodiment
- Figure 3 illustrates a typical arrangement of a Master and a Slave storage configuration
- Figure 4 illustrates an external storage configuration in accordance with one embodiment.
- Figure 5 illustrates a flow diagram describing a process according to one embodiment.
- external peripherals also referenced herein as external enclosures
- firmware enhancements also collectively referenced herein as firmware enhancements.
- additional information may be included in the firmware enhancements.
- the information i.e., firmware enhancements
- firmware of the controller of the peripheral such as on a small capacity non-volatile storage such as an EEPROM or Serial EEPROM.
- the peripheral is an external storage device, such as a disk drive.
- the storage device is one of a Universal Serial Bus (USB) disk drive, a IEEE 1394 (Firewire) disk drive, or a IDE disk drive.
- the referenced peripheral includes an alternative device other than a disk drive, such as network routers.
- the peripheral device has a host interface comprising at least one of USB interface, a serial ATA interface, a Firewire (IEEE 1394 interface), a USB on-the-go (OTG) attached to an ATA (serial or parallel) disk drive.
- a section of the storage medium of the peripheral is allocated to store the firmware enhancements discussed above, rather than a storage medium of the controller.
- the controller of the peripheral is exclusive of a storage medium.
- allocating storage on a storage medium of a peripheral to store firmware enhancements in one embodiment emulates a serial EEPROM of a peripheral controller.
- the cost of providing an auxiliary storage on the controller is reduced.
- the storage medium of the peripheral having an area of storage pre-identified to store the firmware enhancements is the primary storage medium of the peripheral.
- multiple storage mediums are provided on the peripheral, one of which is designated to store the firmware enhancements.
- the controller of the peripheral scans a storage medium of the peripheral device for a pre-designated location of storage that contains the firmware enhancements.
- the firmware enhancements are to be loaded into a memory of the controller, to be processed by a startup routine.
- a processor or controller of the host comes out of reset and starts performing initialization functions, such as setting various registers etc.
- the logic located on the controller seeks for the existence of a pre-designated section of the storage medium storing the firmware enhancements.
- the enhanced firmware is loaded into the memory of the host for execution.
- the enhanced firmware could be loaded into a different memory for execution.
- the logic that causes the processor or controller to seek out the pre-designated section of the storage medium of the peripheral resides in one or more of the operating system (OS), the host Basic Input Output System (BIOS), or a driver of the peripheral device or other device.
- OS operating system
- BIOS Basic Input Output System
- the logic is aware to look for the enhanced firmware on the storage medium of the peripheral rather than the controller of the peripheral, in response to the following.
- up to 64 sectors are pre- designated in the storage medium of the peripheral to store the enhanced firmware.
- alternative size sectors are used.
- the storage media usually have a sweet spot capacity, which, in some cases, is the best value for money. For instance, a typical multi- illustrated in Figure 3, a 250GB Disk Drive may cost $80 whereas a 500GB IDE Hard Disk Drive may cost $300! Thus tremendous savings in cost can be achieved if two 250GB Hard Disk Drives were put together to form one logical 500GB Hard Disk Drive (herein also referred to as TeraDisk), as illustrated in Figure 4.
- TeraDisk 500GB Hard Disk Drive
- a controller of a disk drives determines if a designated jumper or indicator is set (usually a jumper block) to indicate that multiple separate disk drives are to be treated logically as a single disk drive (as illustrated in the configuration of Figure 4).
- the jumper would be located on the printer circuit board which contains the disk drive controller
- the multiple separate disk drives have unique IDs to distinguish them.
- the controller then scans the multiple separate disk drives and computes the total space of the combined entity (i.e., the multiple disk drives).
- the size computation is done by inquiring from its size from each disk drive (e.g., using typically the IDENTIFY DRIVE command (for ATA and ATAPI devices)).
- the firmware adds up the tota) capacities and adjusts for the presence of the teradisk (i.e., the combination of multiple disk drives logically represented as single disk drive) and declares to the hosts the capacity of the teradisk.
- the controller determines to which disk a request is intended for and routes it accordingly.
- the controller determines requests with an address ranging from 0 to 500GB should be routed to the first disk drive and request from 501GB to 1TB should be
- multiple devices connected on the same bus and have different addresses by making one device act like a master and another like a slave.
- the multiple devices include a parallel ATA (also known as an IDE) parlance
- routines executed to implement the embodiments can be implemented as part of an operating system or a specific application, component, program, object, module or sequence of instructions referred to as "computer programs.”
- the computer programs typically comprise one or more instructions set at various times in various memory and storage devices in a computer, and that, when read and executed by one or more processors in a computer, cause the computer to perform operations to execute elements involving the various aspects.
- Examples of computer-readable media include but are not limited to recordable and n ⁇ n-recordabte type media such as volatile and non-volatile memory devices, read only memory (ROM), random access memory (RAM), flash memory devices, floppy and other removable disks, magnetic disk storage media, optical storage media (e.g., Compact Disk Read-Only Memory (CD ROMS), Digital Versatile Disks, (DVDs), etc.), among others.
- the instructions can be embodied in digital and analog communication links for electrical, optical, acoustical or other forms of propagated signals, such as carrier waves, infrared signals, digital signals, etc.
- a machine readable medium can be used to store software and data which when executed by a data processing system causes the system to perform various methods.
- the executable software and data can be stored in various places including for example ROM, volatile RAM, non-volatile memory and/or cache. Portions of this software and/or data can be stored in. any one of these storage devices.
- a machine readable medium includes any mechanism that provides (i.e., stores and/or transmits) information in a form accessible by a machine (e.g., a computer, network device, personal digital assistant, manufacturing tool, any device with a set of one or more processors, etc.).
- a machine e.g., a computer, network device, personal digital assistant, manufacturing tool, any device with a set of one or more processors, etc.
- Some aspects can be embodied, at least in part, in software. That is, the techniques can be carried out in a computer system or other data processing system in response to its processor, such as a microprocessor, executing sequences of instructions contained in a memory, such as ROM, volatile RAM, non-volatile memory, cache, magnetic and optical disks, or a remote storage device. Further, the instructions can be downloaded into a computing device over a data network in a form of compiled and linked version.
- the logic to perform the processes as discussed above could be implemented in additional computer and/or machine readable media, such as discrete hardware components as large-scale integrated circuits (LSI's), application- specific integrated circuits (ASIC's), or firmware such as electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM's).
- LSI's large-scale integrated circuits
- ASIC's application- specific integrated circuits
- EEPROM's electrically erasable programmable read-only memory
- hardwired circuitry can be used in combination with software instructions to implement the embodiments.
- the techniques are not limited
Landscapes
- Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
- Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
- Human Computer Interaction (AREA)
- Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
- General Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
- General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
- Software Systems (AREA)
- Signal Processing For Digital Recording And Reproducing (AREA)
Abstract
Description
Claims
Priority Applications (2)
Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
---|---|---|---|
JP2008538929A JP2009515254A (en) | 2005-11-02 | 2006-10-25 | System and method for enhancing external storage |
EP06836546A EP1946201A2 (en) | 2005-11-02 | 2006-10-25 | System and method for enhancing external storage |
Applications Claiming Priority (4)
Application Number | Priority Date | Filing Date | Title |
---|---|---|---|
US73306705P | 2005-11-02 | 2005-11-02 | |
US60/733,067 | 2005-11-02 | ||
US11/478,895 US20070162626A1 (en) | 2005-11-02 | 2006-06-30 | System and method for enhancing external storage |
US11/478,895 | 2006-06-30 |
Publications (2)
Publication Number | Publication Date |
---|---|
WO2007055925A2 true WO2007055925A2 (en) | 2007-05-18 |
WO2007055925A3 WO2007055925A3 (en) | 2008-01-03 |
Family
ID=40612185
Family Applications (1)
Application Number | Title | Priority Date | Filing Date |
---|---|---|---|
PCT/US2006/041856 WO2007055925A2 (en) | 2005-11-02 | 2006-10-25 | System and method for enhancing external storage |
Country Status (4)
Country | Link |
---|---|
EP (1) | EP1946201A2 (en) |
JP (1) | JP2009515254A (en) |
KR (1) | KR20080067570A (en) |
WO (1) | WO2007055925A2 (en) |
Cited By (1)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
---|---|---|---|---|
US7876894B2 (en) | 2006-11-14 | 2011-01-25 | Mcm Portfolio Llc | Method and system to provide security implementation for storage devices |
Citations (5)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
---|---|---|---|---|
US6028812A (en) * | 1998-03-03 | 2000-02-22 | Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha | Semiconductor memory device and method for controlling the same |
US20010034795A1 (en) * | 2000-02-18 | 2001-10-25 | Moulton Gregory Hagan | System and method for intelligent, globally distributed network storage |
US6930709B1 (en) * | 1997-12-04 | 2005-08-16 | Pentax Of America, Inc. | Integrated internet/intranet camera |
US20060095647A1 (en) * | 2004-08-20 | 2006-05-04 | Smartdisk Corporation | Self-labeling digital storage unit |
US7206989B2 (en) * | 2002-11-20 | 2007-04-17 | Intel Corporation | Integrated circuit having multiple modes of operation |
-
2006
- 2006-10-25 EP EP06836546A patent/EP1946201A2/en not_active Withdrawn
- 2006-10-25 WO PCT/US2006/041856 patent/WO2007055925A2/en active Application Filing
- 2006-10-25 JP JP2008538929A patent/JP2009515254A/en active Pending
- 2006-10-25 KR KR1020077020041A patent/KR20080067570A/en not_active Application Discontinuation
Patent Citations (5)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
---|---|---|---|---|
US6930709B1 (en) * | 1997-12-04 | 2005-08-16 | Pentax Of America, Inc. | Integrated internet/intranet camera |
US6028812A (en) * | 1998-03-03 | 2000-02-22 | Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha | Semiconductor memory device and method for controlling the same |
US20010034795A1 (en) * | 2000-02-18 | 2001-10-25 | Moulton Gregory Hagan | System and method for intelligent, globally distributed network storage |
US7206989B2 (en) * | 2002-11-20 | 2007-04-17 | Intel Corporation | Integrated circuit having multiple modes of operation |
US20060095647A1 (en) * | 2004-08-20 | 2006-05-04 | Smartdisk Corporation | Self-labeling digital storage unit |
Cited By (1)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
---|---|---|---|---|
US7876894B2 (en) | 2006-11-14 | 2011-01-25 | Mcm Portfolio Llc | Method and system to provide security implementation for storage devices |
Also Published As
Publication number | Publication date |
---|---|
JP2009515254A (en) | 2009-04-09 |
KR20080067570A (en) | 2008-07-21 |
EP1946201A2 (en) | 2008-07-23 |
WO2007055925A3 (en) | 2008-01-03 |
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