Method and device for improving the reliability of data storage in a hard disk comprising a plurality of platters

A hard disk comprising a plurality of platters and a disk controller, wherein the disk controller is configured to

• obtain a plurality of data blocks, each block of said plurality of data blocks having to be or being stored on the hard disk, a number of blocks of said plurality of data blocks being less than a number of surfaces of platters of the hard disk able to store data;
• calculate at least one redundancy data block based on each block of said plurality of data blocks, a number of redundancy data blocks added to the number of blocks of said plurality of data blocks being less than or equal to the number of surfaces of platters of the hard disk able to store data;
• write said at least one redundancy data block on a platter surface of the hard disk separate from the surfaces used to store each block of said plurality of data blocks;
• access a plurality of data blocks corresponding to a data item to read from the hard disk and accessing at least one redundancy data block corresponding to said data item to read, each block of said plurality of data blocks and each redundancy data block associated with said data item to read being accessed on a separate platter surface of the hard disk;
• and
• after accessing both the plurality of data blocks corresponding to the data item to read from the hard disk and the at least one redundancy data block corresponding to said data item to read, check an integrity of the data item corresponding to said plurality of data blocks accessed according to said at least one redundancy data block corresponding to said data item to read,
• wherein each of the plurality of data blocks corresponding to the data item and each redundancy data block associated with said data item are written on separate platter surfaces at a same location of a same sector of a same track of the hard disk.

A method for a controller of a hard disk comprising a plurality of platters, to improve the reliability of the hard disk, each platter comprising at least one data storage surface, the method comprising:

• accessing a plurality of data blocks that are stored on the hard disk, wherein the plurality of data blocks correspond to a data item to be read from the hard disk;
• accessing at least one redundancy data block corresponding to the data item, the at least one redundancy data block being previously calculated based on each of the plurality of data blocks;
• and
• after accessing the plurality of data blocks and the at least one redundancy data block from the hard disk, checking an integrity of the data item corresponding to the plurality of data blocks according to the at least one redundancy data block,
• wherein a number of the plurality of data blocks added to a number of the redundancy data blocks is less than or equal to a number of surfaces of platters of the hard disk able to store data, and
• wherein each of the plurality of data blocks and each of the at least one redundancy data block are accessed from a separate platter surface of the hard disk at a same location of a same sector of a same track of the hard disk.