Saving self-test output to both flash and media

• US 20050154951A1
• Filed: 07/15/2004
• Published: 07/14/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 12/24/2003
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Matsushita Electric Industrial Company Limited (Panasonic Holdings Corporation)
• Inventors: Clint, Helen, Paul, Steve, Zayas, Fernando A., Budiman, Mine
• Application Number:
  US10/891,842
• Publication Number:
  US 20050154951A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/733
• CPC Class Codes: G01R 31/28 Testing of electronic circuits, e.g. by signal tracer EMC, EMP or similar testing of electronic circuits G01R31/002; testing for short-circuits, discontinuities, leakage or incorrect line connection G01R31/50; checking computers or computer components G06F11/00; checking static stores for correct operation G11C29/00 ; testing receivers or transmitters of transmission systems H04B17/00
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 20/1816 Testing
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 2220/2516 Hard disks
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 27/36 Monitoring, i.e. supervising the progress of recording or reproducing for digital recording G11B20/00 and s.gr.; for monitoring, testing or measuring of TV recorders of the type covered by H04N5/76 and subgroups, see H04N17/06

Abstract

A hard disk drive includes a flash memory and a rotatable disk. During self-test, self-test data is written first to flash and then later written to the rotatable disk. Since the self-test data is stored in the flash, if there is a power failure the hard disk drive can recover without repeating the test.

Claims

1. A hard disk drive comprising:

at least one rotatable disk adapted to store data;

non-volatile memory, and

a controller, wherein, during self-test, the controller stores self-test data to the non-volatile memory.

2. The hard disk drive of claim 1, wherein the controller later writes the self-test data to the rotatable disk

3. The hard disk drive of claim 1, wherein the controller runs a self-test engine software to control the writing of the self-test data.

4. The hard disk drive of claim 3, wherein the controller runs a self-test engine that executes a self-test script.

5. The hard disk drive of claim 4, wherein lines of the self-test script are associated with self-test code.

6. The hard disk drive of claim 5, wherein the self-test code includes “

print”

statements record the results of a test, and wherein the self-test engine determines where to store the self-test data.

7. The hard disk drive of claim 4, wherein the script includes checkpoint instructions.

8. The hard disk drive of claim 7, wherein the checkpoint instructions indicate to the self-test engine to transfer self-test data from the non-volatile memory to the rotatable disk.

9. The hard disk drive of claim 8, wherein the checkpoint instructions causes portion of flash memory to be erased after writing to rotating media.

10. The hard disk drive of claim 1, wherein the self-test data is compressed before being stored in the non-volatile memory.

11. The hard disk drive of claim 10, wherein the self-test data is decompressed before being written to the rotatable disk.

12. The hard disk drive of claim 10, wherein a self-test engine compresses the self-test data.

13. The hard disk drive of claim 1, wherein the hard disk drive further includes a RAM.

14. The hard disk drive of claim 13, wherein the self-test data is written into RAM when there is not enough space in the non-volatile memory.

15. The hard disk drive of claim 1, wherein the non-volatile memory is a flash memory.