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US 4,914,530 AGranted
Media defect management within disk drive sector format
AssigneePlus Development Corporation
InventorsRandolph H. Graham, Dennis W. Hollenbeck
Life of this patent
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AssigneePlus Development Corporation
InventorsRandolph H. Graham, Dennis W. Hollenbeck
Estimating the term…
In a rotating disk drive for storing and retrieving data used by a host system computer, a narrow gap is provided within a data sector format for each concentric data track of the drive. This gap may be normally located at the end of the track, in a speed tolerance buffer region following the last sector. In the event a media defect is detected which otherwise falls within a NAR area for a particular sector, this gap may be shifted to the beginning of the data track, thereby shifting all of the sectors and their NAR areas backward by the width of the gap. The media defect otherwise falling into the NAR area of a particular sector then falls harmlessly into a data field of a preceding sector, and this preceding sector may then be read and mapped out of service by insertion of a spare sector within the physical track without any loss of user data storage capability.
A method for managing media defects of a rotating data storage disk drive comprising the steps of:
A rotating data storage disk for a disk drive characterized by at least one data track having a predetermined data sector format and a narrow gap within said data sector format for said track, wherein the data sector format comprises at least one sector having at least one address marker region, the narrow gap being sized in relation to the length of the address mark region, the narrow gap being normally located in a first region of the track, the narrow gap being relocatable to a second region of the track in order to shift the physical location of the at least one sector relative to the disk so that a media defect otherwise located in said address marker region is thereby shifted to another location of said disk outside of the address marker region of said data sector format.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.