System and method for write protecting portions of magnetic tape storage media
AssigneeOracle International Corporation
InventorsDavid G. Hostetter, John Steven Herron
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium includes a tape having a plurality of partitions configured for storing data, and a plurality of read-only partition identifiers, each read-only partition identifier associated with one of the plurality of partitions and readable by a tape drive having a processor and memory for writing and reading tape data. Each read-only partition identifier selectively designates a corresponding one of the partitions as read-only to prevent data from being written to the designated read-only partition by the tape drive.
Claims24
One or more non-transitory machine-readable media storing instructions which, when executed by one or more processors, cause performance of operations comprising:
- writing, by a drive processor, data to a first partition of a plurality of partitions in a storage medium, the first partition being associated with a respective read-only partition identifier with a value indicating that the first partition is designated as a read-write partition;
- detecting, by the drive processor, an unacceptable number of errors during reading and/or writing to the first partition;
- and
- responsive to detecting the unacceptable number of errors during reading and/or writing to the first partition:
- modifying the value of the respective read-only partition identifier to an updated value that designates the first partition as a read-only partition.
A method for reading and writing data on a storage medium, the method comprising:
- partitioning a storage medium into a plurality of partitions, each of the plurality of partitions configured for storing data readable by a drive processor;
- writing, by the drive processor, data to a first partition of the plurality of partitions in the storage medium, the first partition being associated with a respective read-only partition identifier with a value indicating that the first partition is designated as a read-write partition;
- detecting, by the drive processor, a predetermined unacceptable number of errors during reading and/or writing to the first partition;
- responsive to detecting the unacceptable number of errors during reading and/or writing to the first partition and determining that the first partition is designated as a read-write partition:
- modifying the value of the respective read-only partition identifier to an updated value that designates the first partition as a read-only partition.
A system, comprising:
- one or more processors;
- and
- memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the system to perform:
- partitioning a storage medium into a plurality of partitions, each of the plurality of partitions configured for storing data readable by a drive processor;
- writing, by the drive processor, data to a first partition of the plurality of partitions in the storage medium, the first partition being associated with a respective read-only partition identifier with a value indicating that the first partition is designated as a read-write partition;
- detecting, by the drive processor, a predetermined unacceptable number of errors during reading and/or writing to the first partition;
- responsive to detecting the unacceptable number of errors during reading and/or writing to the first partition and determining that the first partition is designated as a read-write partition:
- modifying the value of the respective read-only partition identifier to an updated value that designates the first partition as a read-only partition.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.