Hard disk sector/track remapping for transparent wear leveling

Abstract

The present principles provide methods for storing the write counts for each track on the track or alternatively in NVRAM in the hard disk. Most hard disks already have a mechanism to remap a sector that becomes un-writable. This mechanism is used to remap entire tracks when a track write count becomes too high. A track with an excessively high write count can be mapped by the hard disk firmware to a track with a very low write count. By automatically remapping these tracks based on the number of write the wear can be more evenly distributed across the platter thus increasing the service life of the hard disk without modification to the application software.

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