# US 2014/0156873 A1 · Electronic apparatus

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- Number: US 2014/0156873 A1
- Document ID: US20140156873A1
- Status: Published application
- Kind: A1
- Application number: 14/232,945
- Filed: 2011-08-04
- Published: 2014-06-05
- Earliest claimed: 2011-08-04
- Assignees: Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
- Inventors: Kengo Koara
- Web page: https://patentgrep.com/patent/US20140156873A1

## CPC

- G06F 9/4411: {Configuring for operating with peripheral devices; Loading of device drivers}
- G06F 3/0604: {Improving or facilitating administration, e.g. storage management}
- G06F 3/0632: {by initialisation or re-initialisation of storage systems}
- G06F 3/0673: {Single storage device}
- G06F: ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING (computer systems based on specific computational models G06N)

## Abstract

A programmable display device includes a USB interface to which a USB removable drive device is connected, a nonvolatile memory configured to store USB removable drive device peculiar information peculiar to the USB removable drive device and drive allocation fixing setting information indicating correspondence between the USB removable drive device and a drive number and incorporated in the programmable display device, and a control unit configured to allocate, when information coinciding with the USB removable drive device peculiar information acquired from the USB removable drive device connected to the USB interface is included in drive allocation information stored in the nonvolatile memory, a drive number associated according to the drive allocation information to the USB removable drive device connected to the USB interface.

## Claims

### Claim 1

An electronic apparatus to which a plurality of USB removable drive devices for reading and writing an external storage medium are connectable, the electronic apparatus allocating a drive number to the USB removable drive device connected thereto and managing the USB removable drive device,
the electronic apparatus comprising:
a USB interface to which the USB removable drive device is connected;
a nonvolatile memory configured to store USB removable drive device peculiar information peculiar to the USB removable drive device and drive allocation information indicating correspondence between the USB removable drive device and the drive number and incorporated in the electronic apparatus; and
a control unit configured to allocate, when information coinciding with the USB removable drive device peculiar information acquired from the USB removable drive device connected to the USB interface is included in the drive allocation information stored in the nonvolatile memory, the drive number associated according to the drive allocation information with the USB removable drive device connected to the USB interface, wherein
the nonvolatile memory further stores drive allocation fixing setting information indicating whether each of the drive numbers is fixedly allocated to a specific one of the USB removable drive devices, and
the control unit allocates the drive numbers, for which setting for not allocating the drive number to the specific USB removable drive device is performed according to the drive allocation fixing setting information, to the USB removable drive devices other than the specific USB removable drive device in order of connection to the USB interface.

### Claim 2

(canceled)

### Claim 3 (depends on 1)

The electronic apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the control unit includes a drive-allocation-fixing-setting-information editing unit configured to change the drive allocation fixing setting information.

### Claim 4 (depends on 1)

The electronic apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the control unit includes a drive-allocation-information editing unit including a drive-allocation changing unit configured to change the drive number associated with the specific USB removable drive device according to the drive allocation information to another drive number and a drive-allocation releasing unit configured to release the association of the specific USB removable drive device with the drive number by the drive allocation information.

### Claim 5 (depends on 1)

The electronic apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the electronic apparatus is a programmable display device including:
a communication interface for connection to an external control device; and
a display screen with touch panel configured to display an operation state of the external control device connected via the communication interface and receive setting operation for the external control device.