US 5,313,612 A · Information recording and reproducing apparatus including both data and work optical disk drives for restoring data and commands after a malfunction

Abstract

An information recording and reproducing apparatus has a plurality of optical disk drives including a data optical disk drive for storing data, a work or backup optical disk drive for temporarily storing the data and, preferably, a disk cache memory. The optical disk drives are coupled to a host device such as a central processing unit (CPU) through an optical disk control unit for controlling recording and reproduction of the data. The optical disk control unit writes commands and data transmitted from the host device into the work optical disk drive and the disk cache memory and, if required, writes the data of the disk cache memory into the data optical disk drive. The optical disk control unit, on activation of the apparatus following a malfunction, restores the data of the data optical disk drive to the most recent state thereof by using the contents of the work optical disk drive, whereby the number of times of writing to an optical disk is decreased by using the disk cache memory so as to prevent the data loss on occurrence of problems in functioning of the apparatus, such as power failure or hardware error.

Claims12

Dependent claims

An information recording and reproducing apparatus comprising:

a data optical disk drive for storing data,
a work optical disk drive for temporarily storing data, and
an optical disk control means for coupling said data optical disk drive and said work optical disk drive to a host device to control recording and reproduction of data,
said optical disk control means for writing both control commands for the host device to update data and host data from said host device into said work optical disk drive and for writing said host data into said data optical disk drive in according with said control commands so as to reproduce both said control commands and said host data written in said work optical disk drive upon occurrence of a malfunction of said data optical disk drive and to restore said host data written in said data optical disk drive on the basis of the control commands reproduced from said work optical disk drive, and
further comprising a disk cache memory for temporarily storing data;
wherein said optical disk control means controls said disk cache memory to write said host data transmitted from said host device into said disk cache memory at the same time that said data-updating control commands and said host data are written from said host device into said work optical disk drive.

3 more elements

An information recording and reproducing apparatus comprising:

a plurality of data optical disk drives for recording and reproducing data,
a work optical disk drive for temporarily storing data,
a disk cache for temporarily storing data, and
an optical disk control means coupling said data optical disk drives and said work optical disk drive to a host device for controlling recording and reproduction of data and for controlling said disk cache,
said optical disk control means restoring data stored in one of said data optical disk drives upon occurrence of a malfunction of said one of said data optical disk drives,
wherein said optical disk control means continuously and sequentially writes at least a write control command and host data from said host device onto tracks of said work optical disk drive;
temporarily stores the host data in said disk cache;
transfers the host data from said disk cache into said one of said data optical disk drives;
reads the write control command and host data from said work optical disk drive;
restores said one of said data optical disk drives by re-executing the write control command read from said work optical disk drive using the host data read from said work optical disk drive;
and
stores data resulting from re-execution of the write control command into said one of said data optical disk drives.

9 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Information recording and reproducing apparatus including both data and work optical disk drives for restoring data and commands after a malfunction

Life of this patent

Information recording and reproducing apparatus including both data and work optical disk drives for restoring data and commands after a malfunction

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims12