Method, apparatus and program storage device for protecting data writes in a data storage device
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsJoseph Hyde, Ronald Venturi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method, apparatus and program storage device for protecting data write operations against write failures in a data storage device is provided. The data storage device includes a storage medium, a write cache including a copy of data written to the storage medium, and a controller configured for testing data write operations to the storage medium. The controller tests data write operations to the storage medium before the write cache is flushed to confirm that it is safe to flush the write cache. If the test fails, the data in the write cache can be recovered.
Claims20
A disk drive comprising:
- a storage medium;
- a write cache including a copy of data written to the storage medium;
- and
- a controller configured for testing data write operations to the storage medium, wherein the controller tests data write operations to the storage medium before flushing the write cache.
A method for protecting data write operations in a disk drive, comprising:
- saving write data to a write cache and to a storage medium;
- testing data write operations to the storage medium;
- and
- flushing the write cache after a test of data write operations completes successfully.
A program storage device, comprising:
- program instructions executable by a processing device to perform operations for protecting data write operations against write failures in a storage device, the operations comprising
- saving write data to a write cache and to a storage medium;
- testing data write operations to the storage medium;
- and
- flushing the write cache after a test of data write operations completes successfully.
A controller for processing data read and writes to a storage medium via read and write caches, comprising a read/write self-test procedure for testing data write operations to the storage medium, wherein the self-test procedure tests data write operations to the storage medium before flushing the write cache.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.