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US 9,959,892 B1Granted
Extending usable life of magnetic storage media
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsTsuyoshi Miyamura, Kazuhiro Tsuruta, Eiji Ogura, Tomoko Taketomi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Some embodiments of the present invention logically eliminate an end region of a user-data area of a magnetic storage tape during formatting (or re-formatting) of the tape, if the position error signal (PES) variance corresponding to the end region exceeds a threshold. An adjacent region, having a PES variance less than the threshold is designated as a new end region, thereby shortening the user-data area of the tape and extending its usable life.
Claims9
A method comprising:
- determining a deviation value corresponding to an end region of a plurality of regions of a tape, where the end region corresponds to a turnaround position of a tape drive head;
- determining that the deviation value of the end region exceeds a threshold;
- in response to determining that the deviation value of the end region exceeds the threshold, eliminating the end region, from the plurality of regions;
- designating a new end region having a deviation value that does not exceed the threshold, where the new end region is adjacent to the eliminated end region;
- creating a shortened user-data area based, at least in part, on the new end region;
- and
- notifying a user of a new data capacity of the tape based on the shortened user-data area;
- wherein:
- the shortened user-data area comprises regions, of the plurality of regions, for which a respectively corresponding plurality of deviation values do not exceed the threshold;
- and
- the new end region comprises one of:
- (i) a beginning region of the shortened user-data area;
- or (ii) an ending region of the shortened user-data area.
10 more elements
A computer program product comprising:
- one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media and program instructions stored on the one or more non-transitory computer readable storage media, the program instructions comprising instructions to perform:
- determining a deviation value corresponding to an end region of a plurality of regions of a tape, where the end region corresponds to a turnaround position of a tape drive head,
- determining that the deviation value of the end region exceeds a threshold,
- in response to determining that the deviation value of the end region exceeds the threshold, eliminating the end region, from the plurality of regions,
- designating a new end region having a deviation value that does not exceed the threshold where the new end region is adjacent to the eliminated end region,
- creating a shortened user-data area based, at least in part, on the new end region, and
- notifying a user of a new data capacity of the tape based on the shortened user-data area;
- wherein:
- the shortened user-data area comprises regions, of the plurality of regions, for which respectively corresponding plurality of deviation values do not exceed the threshold, and
- the new end region comprises one of:
- (i) a beginning region of the shortened user-data area, or (ii) an ending region of the shortened user-data area.
8 more elements
A computer system comprising:
- one or more computer processors;
- one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media;
- program instructions stored on the non-transitory computer-readable storage media for execution by at least one of the one or more processors, the program instructions comprising instructions to perform:
- determining a deviation value corresponding to an end region of a plurality of regions of a tape, where the end region corresponds to a turnaround position of a tape drive head,
- determining that the deviation value of the end region exceeds a threshold, and
- in response to determining that the deviation value of the end region exceeds the threshold, eliminating the end region, from the plurality of regions,
- designating a new end region having a deviation value that does not exceed the threshold, where the new end region is adjacent to the eliminated end region,
- creating a shortened user-data area based, at least in part, on the new end region, and
- notifying a user of a new data capacity of the tape based on the shortened user-data area,
- wherein the new end region comprises one of:
- (i) a beginning region of the shortened user-data area;
- or (ii) an ending region of the shortened user-data area.
9 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.