AUTONOMOUS EVENT LOGGING FOR DRIVE FAILURE ANALYSIS

• US 20130198574A1
• Filed: 01/27/2012
• Published: 08/01/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 01/27/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Seagate Technology LLC (Seagate Technology Holdings Plc)
• Original Assignee: Seagate Technology LLC (Seagate Technology Holdings Plc)
• Inventors: Higley, Brian John, Gill, Bradley John
• Granted Patent: US 9,047,922 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/45
• 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 11/0766 Error or fault reporting or storing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3058 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring environmental properties or parameters of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring of power, currents, temperature, humidity, position, vibrations thermal management in cooling arrangements of a computing system G06F1/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3476 Data logging G06F11/14, G06F11/2205 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/81 Threshold
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/86 Event-based monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 2220/63 wherein solid state memory is used as a supplementary storage medium to store auxiliary data for detecting or correcting errors on a main storage medium
• 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 method and system for providing autonomous event logging and retrieval for failure analysis. In one implementation, storage device firmware monitors and records events (e.g., storage device errors and/or failures) to the storage device flash in substantially real time from power on of the storage device to power off. Additionally, diagnostic data relating to an event, including a time stamp and storage device environmental conditions are recorded. The logged event data may be utilized to streamline failure analysis by determining whether the storage device failed and if so, when the storage device failed and what the conditions of the storage device were at the time of the failure. Such information may be used for failure, warranty, integrator, and/or troubleshooting analysis.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

recording event-based diagnostic data for a detected event autonomously to memory in a storage device.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the event-based diagnostic data includes a timestamp.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the event-based diagnostic data further includes an error code describing the detected event and raw data corresponding to performance of the storage device at the time of the detected event.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the raw data includes monitored environmental conditions of the storage device.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the detected event is a storage device detected event.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the event-based diagnostic data is recorded from power on of the storage device to power off.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

outputting a diagnostics log presenting the event-based diagnostic data.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the memory is flash memory.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the event-based diagnostics data is recorded in substantially real time.

11. The storage device of claim 9, wherein the event-based diagnostic data further includes an error code describing the storage device detected event and raw data corresponding to the performance of the storage device at the time of the storage device detected event.

13. The storage device of claim 11, wherein the detected event is a storage device detected event.

14. The storage device of claim 9, wherein the event-based diagnostic data is recorded from power on of the storage device to power off.

16. The tangible processor-readable storage medium of claim 14, wherein the event-based diagnostic data includes a timestamp.

18. The tangible processor-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the raw data includes monitored environmental conditions of the storage device.

19. The tangible processor-readable storage medium of claim 16, wherein the detected event is a storage device detected event.

10. A storage device comprising:

memory storing firmware instructions for recording event-based diagnostic data for a detected event autonomously to flash memory.

12. The storage device of claim 10, wherein the raw data includes monitored environmental conditions of the storage device.

15. A tangible processor-readable storage medium encoding a processor executable program for executing a process, the process comprising:

recording event-based diagnostic data for a detected event autonomously to memory in a storage device.

17. The tangible processor-readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the event-based diagnostic data further includes an error code describing the storage device detected event and raw data corresponding to the performance of the storage device at the time of the storage device detected event.

20. The tangible processor-readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the event-based diagnostic data is recorded from power on of the storage device to power off.