Hard disk drive condition reporting and error correction

• US 20060282709A1
• Filed: 12/08/2005
• Published: 12/14/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 06/14/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Meng, Yi, Obr, Nathan S., Shu, Frank J.
• Granted Patent: US 7,802,019 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/100
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0727 in a storage system, e.g. in a DASD or network based storage system drivers for digital recording or reproducing units G06F3/06; circuits for error detection or correction within digital recording or reproducing units G11B20/18; for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS], H04L67/1097
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0775 Content or structure details of the error report, e.g. specific table structure, specific error fields
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/0793 Remedial or corrective actions recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1435 using file system or storage system metadata
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3485 for I/O devices
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 19/048 Testing of disk drives, e.g. to detect defects or prevent sudden failure
• 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 system that facilitates maintaining hard disk drive performance comprises a memory component that includes extensions to at least one protocol associated with a hard disk drive, the extensions enable communications to occur in real-time between an operating system and the hard disk drive. An interface component utilizes the extensions to receive a notification from the hard disk drive and relay the notification to the operating system, the notification relates to an operating parameter of the hard disk drive.

Claims

1. A system that facilitates maintaining hard disk drive performance comprising the following computer-executable components:

a memory component that includes extensions to at least one protocol associated with a hard disk drive, the extensions enable communications to occur in real-time between an operating system and the hard disk drive; and

an interface component that utilizes the extensions to receive a notification from the hard disk drive and relay the notification to the operating system, the notification relates to an operating parameter of the hard disk drive.

2. The system of claim 1, the interface component receives one or more commands from the operating system in response to the notification and relays the commands to the hard disk drive through utilization of the protocol extensions.

3. The system of claim 2, the hard disk drive determines at least one action to be undertaken by the operating system and provides the at least one action to the operating system upon receipt of the commands, the at least one action is provided to the operating system from the hard disk drive by way of the interface component.

4. The system of claim 3, the hard disk drive comprises a policy component that analyzes sensed parameters and historic performance data in connection with determining the at least one action, the hard disk drive effectuates determining the at least one action.

5. The system of claim 4, the operating system further comprises a prioritization component that determines an operating system action to undertake based at least in part upon current activity associated with the operating system.

6. The system of claim 1, the hard disk drive comprises one or more sensors that sense at least one of temperature, vibration, G force, read speed, write speed, power on time, error rate, power on frequency, and duty cycle information, the notification is based at least in part upon parameters sensed by the sensors.

7. The system of claim 1, the operating system comprises a polling component that polls the hard disk drive for the notification, the notification delivered to the operating system upon detection of the notification by the polling component.

8. The system of claim 1, the at least one protocol is one of small computer system interface (SCSI), serial attached SCSI (SAS), parallel ATA (PATA) and serial ATA (SATA) protocol.

9. The system of claim 1, the hard disk drive analyzes at least one of sensed performance information and sensed error information and determines an action to be undertaken with respect to the hard disk drive based at least in part upon the analysis.

10. The system of claim 1, the hard disk drive comprises a reminder component that resends the notification after a threshold amount of time passes without response from the operating system.

11. The system of claim 1, the operating system further comprises a presentation component that presents information relating to the notification to a user.

12. The system of claim 11, the presentation component creates an email and delivers such email to an account associated with the user.

13. The system of claim 1, the operating system at least one of powers off the hard disk drive, performs load balancing, initiates backup of the hard disk, and alerts a user in response to the received notification.

14. The system of claim 1, further comprising a data store component that includes historical performance information, an action to be undertaken to correct an error condition associated with the hard drive is based at least in part upon an analysis of the historical performance information.

15. A method for maintaining hard disk drive performance comprising the following computer-executable acts:

configuring an operating system to receive a notification from a hard disk drive by way of a protocol extension associated with the hard disk drive, the notification is based at least in part upon parameters relating to the hard disk drive;

responding to the notification at the operating system with at least one command, the command employed to retrieve an action determined by the hard disk drive; and

performing the action at the operating system.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising configuring the operating system to poll the hard disk drive for the notification.

17. The method of claim 15, further comprising associating the hard disk drive with sensors that monitor performance parameters of the hard disk drive, the notification is based at least in part upon a performance parameter sensed by at least one of the sensors.

18. The method of claim 15, further comprising generating a graphical user interface in response to the notification, the graphical user interface displays at least one of a warning and selectable actions to a user of the hard disk drive.

19. The method of claim 15, further comprising reminding the operating system of the notification if the operating system has not responded to the notification after passage of a threshold amount of time.

20. A computer-implemented system for performance monitoring and correcting of a hard disk drive, comprising:

computer-implemented means for determining hard disk drive status;

computer-implemented means for communicating a corrective action to be undertaken by an operating system between the hard disk drive and the operating system; and

computer-implemented means for performing the corrective action at the operating system.