Open block stability scanning
AssigneeSeagate Technology LLC
InventorsRyan James Goss, Antoine Khoueir, Ara Patapoutian
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Systems and methods are disclosed for open block stability scanning. When a solid state memory block remains in an open state, where the block is only partially filled with written data, for a prolonged period of time, a circuit may perform a scan on the block to determine the stability of the stored data. When the scan indicates that the data is below a stability threshold, the data may be refreshed by reading the data and writing it to a new location. When the scan indicates that the data is above a stability threshold, the circuit may extend the time period in which the block may remain in the open state.
Claims19
An apparatus comprising:
- a circuit configured to implement a variable open block refresh time threshold that controls when to refresh data from an open block of a solid state memory that is partially filled with data, including:
- compare a stability value for data to a plurality of tiered stability thresholds;
- and
- extend the variable open block refresh time threshold by different amounts based on which of the tiered stability thresholds the stability value exceeds.
A method comprising:
- implementing a variable open block refresh time threshold that controls when to refresh data from an open block of a solid state memory that is partially filled with data, including:
- determining whether to extend the variable open block refresh time threshold without refreshing the data based on a number of read errors in N most recently written storage locations from the open block, where N is an integer value less than a number of storage locations in the block.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.