Information recording/reproducing apparatus having segmented cache memory

Abstract

An information recording/reproducing apparatus for recording or reproducing information on or from a recording medium comprises a segmented cache type cache memory having a storage area thereof divided into a plurality of segments and temporarily storing data to be transferred between an upper-level host computer and the recording medium in the segments, and a cache memory management unit for controlling reading or writing of data from or in the cache memory and for managing and retrieving data stored in the cache memory. The number of segments into which the storage area of the cache memory is divided is set on the basis of an optimal number of segments determined according to the conditions for an operation program and management data storage memory existent in the cache memory management unit. Moreover, the size of each segment is set to a value permitting the set number of segments according to the storage capacity of the cache memory.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.