Method and apparatus for predicting recovery time of hard disk drive

• US 6,549,973 B1
• Filed: 05/18/2000
• Issued: 04/15/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 06/14/1999
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Western Digital Technologies Incorporated (Western Digital Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Netherlands BV (Western Digital Corporation)
• Inventors: Colegrove, Daniel J., Asano, Hideo, Kibashi, Akira
• Primary Examiner(s): Kim, Matthew
• Assistant Examiner(s): BATAILLE, PIERRE MICHE
• Application Number:
  US09/575,207
• Time in Patent Office: 1,062 Days
• Field of Search: 711/112, 711/4, 711/166, 710/7, 710/17, 710/19, 360/73.06, 713/323, 713/340, 713/324
• US Class Current: 711/4
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 19/20 Driving; Starting; Stopping; Control thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 20/10 Digital recording or reproducing

Abstract

A method and an apparatus for predicting the recovery time required until the hard disk drive is restored to a usable state from a stand-by state. The recovery time is a time required until the hard disk drive is restored to a usable state from the stand-by state. Then, the predicted recovery time is reported to the host system. When the host system knows how much time is needed until the disk drive is recovered, it can schedule a task to be completed before the hard disk drive is restarted, thereby scheduling of all the tasks in the host system can be optimized.

Claims

1. A method for predicting a recovery time of a hard disk drive connected to a computer, said disk drive including an actuator and a spindle motor to rotate a disk, comprising:

predicting the recovery time of the hard disk drive from a stand-by state to a usable state when the hard disk drive receives a request from the computer to exit the stand-by state; and

,

reporting the predicted recovery time of the hard disk drive to the computer,

wherein the recovery time is predicted with the formula;