METHOD FOR RESTORING AND MAINTAINING SOLID-STATE DRIVE PERFORMANCE
First Claim
1. A method of increasing a performance level of a solid-state drive having at least one solid-state memory device and comprising cells organized in pages that are organized in memory blocks in which are stored user files and/or system files of an operating system for the solid-state drive, the method comprising:
- executing a defragmentation utility to cause at least some of the memory blocks that are partially filled with data and contain file fragments to be combined or aligned and to cause at least some of the memory blocks that contain only invalid data to be combined or aligned;
executing a block consolidation utility to free-up at least some of the partially-filled blocks by consolidating the file fragments of at least some of the partially-filled blocks into a fewer number of the memory blocks, the block consolidation utility increasing the number of memory blocks that contain only invalid data; and
then erasing all of the memory blocks that contain only invalid data to yield free blocks having free usable space for use by the solid-state drive.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A method of maintaining a solid-state drive so that free space within memory blocks of the drive becomes free usable space to the drive. The drive comprises cells organized in pages that are organized in memory blocks in which at least user files are stored. A defragmentation utility is executed to cause at least some of the memory blocks that are partially filled with data and contain file fragments to be combined or aligned and to cause at least some of the memory blocks that contain only invalid data to be combined or aligned. A block consolidation utility is then executed to eliminate at least some of the partially-filled blocks by consolidating the file fragments into a fewer number of the memory blocks. The consolidation utility also increases the number of memory blocks that contain only invalid memory. All of the memory blocks containing only invalid data are then erased.
274 Citations
22 Claims
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1. A method of increasing a performance level of a solid-state drive having at least one solid-state memory device and comprising cells organized in pages that are organized in memory blocks in which are stored user files and/or system files of an operating system for the solid-state drive, the method comprising:
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executing a defragmentation utility to cause at least some of the memory blocks that are partially filled with data and contain file fragments to be combined or aligned and to cause at least some of the memory blocks that contain only invalid data to be combined or aligned; executing a block consolidation utility to free-up at least some of the partially-filled blocks by consolidating the file fragments of at least some of the partially-filled blocks into a fewer number of the memory blocks, the block consolidation utility increasing the number of memory blocks that contain only invalid data; and
then erasing all of the memory blocks that contain only invalid data to yield free blocks having free usable space for use by the solid-state drive. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 19, 21)
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10. A method of increasing a performance level of a solid-state drive having at least one solid-state memory device and comprising cells organized in pages that are organized in memory blocks in which user files and system files of an operating system for the solid-state drive are stored, the method comprising:
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analyzing the solid-state drive to identify the system files and the user files stored in the memory blocks and group the user files into at least higher frequency-accessed user files and lower frequency-accessed user files; removing the lower frequency-accessed user files so that the higher-frequency accessed user files remain stored in the memory blocks, at least some of the higher-frequency accessed user files being stored in partially-used memory blocks of the memory blocks, and the removing of the lower frequency-accessed user files causes at least some of the memory blocks to contain only invalid data; executing a defragmentation utility to cause at least some of the partially-used blocks containing file fragments to be combined or aligned and to cause at least some of the memory blocks that contain only invalid data to be combined or aligned; executing a block consolidation utility to eliminate at least some of the partially-used blocks by consolidating the file fragments of at least some of the partially-used blocks into a fewer number of the memory blocks, the block consolidation utility increasing the number of memory blocks that contain only invalid memory; and
thenerasing all of the memory blocks that contain only invalid data to yield free blocks having free usable space for use by the solid-state drive. - View Dependent Claims (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22)
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Specification