Disk drive with partial sector management
AssigneeWestern Digital Technologies, Inc.
InventorsBret E. Cobos, Sang Huynh
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A disk drive is disclosed comprising a disk having a host addressable area and a reserved area, an exception table stored in the reserved area, a head actuated radially over the disk to write data to the disk, and control circuitry coupled to the head. The control circuitry receives a first command from the host to write first host data into a first physical sector on the disk, wherein the first host data comprises an amount of data less than a full storage capacity of the first physical sector. The control circuitry detects an uncorrectable error while reading the first physical sector during read-modify-write operation, and indicates in the exception table that the first physical sector is a partial sector including valid and invalid logical block addresses (LBAs).
Claims26
A disk drive comprising:
- a disk comprising a host addressable area and a reserved area, the host addressable area comprising a plurality of physical sectors, each physical sector associated with a plurality of logical block addresses (LBAs);
- an exception table stored in the reserved area;
- a head actuated radially over the disk to write data to the disk;
- and
- control circuitry coupled to the head, the control circuitry operable to:
- receive a first command from the host to write first host data into a first physical sector on the disk, wherein the first host data comprises an amount of data less than a full storage capacity of the first physical sector;
- detect an uncorrectable error while reading the first physical sector during a read-modify-write operation;
- and
- when an uncorrectable error is detected, indicate in the exception table that the first physical sector is a partial sector including valid and invalid LBAs, wherein the valid LBAs correspond to valid host data, and the invalid LBAs correspond to invalid host data.
A method of operating a disk drive, the disk drive comprising a disk, the disk comprising a host addressable area and a reserved area, the host addressable area comprising a plurality of physical sectors, each physical sector associated with a plurality of LBAs, an exception table stored in the reserved area, a head actuated radially over the disk to write data to the disk, the method comprising:
- receiving a first command from the host to write first host data into a first physical sector on the disk, wherein the first host data comprises an amount of data less than a full storage capacity of the first physical sector;
- detecting an uncorrectable error while reading the first physical sector during a read-modify-write operation;
- and
- when an uncorrectable error is detected, indicating in the exception table that the first physical sector is a partial sector including valid and invalid LBAs, wherein the valid LBAs correspond to valid host data, and the invalid LBAs correspond to invalid host data.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.