Method and apparatus of sustained sequential data transfer in a media drive

Abstract

A disk drive that sustains a constant rate to a host and provides a method for allowing retries and accesses to reallocated sectors if the disk drive's recent historical performance has been sufficient to guarantee that the minimum transfer rate will be met while performing a retry or accessing a reallocated sector. During the transfer of data, the disk drive determines a reserve value that represents the amount of data that is stored in a transfer buffer. The reserve value is increased by the number of sectors actually sent to an intermediate buffer between the disk drive and the host, and decreased based on the minimum or constant data rate, normalized to revolutions of a disk within the drive. Based on this value, the disk drive determines if the disk drive can seek for data in reallocated sectors or to perform retries to correct faulty data while maintaining the minimum transfer rate. Because disk drive electronics provide automation for the transfer portion, the process of performing retries and seeks may be programed in the hardware such that specific conditions may be set under which the disk drive may stop and perform a retry or seek to a reallocated sector location.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.