Method and system for accessing non-volatile storage devices

• US 20070143532A1
• Filed: 12/21/2005
• Published: 06/21/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 12/21/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: SanDisk Technologies LLC (Western Digital Corporation)
• Original Assignee: SanDisk Corporation (Western Digital Corporation)
• Inventors: Sinclair, Alan, Gorobets, Sergey
• Granted Patent: US 7,747,837 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/103
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0607 by facilitating the process of upgrading existing storage systems, e.g. for improving compatibility between host and storage device
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0638 Organizing or formatting or addressing of data
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0679 Non-volatile semiconductor memory device, e.g. flash memory, one time programmable memory [OTP]

Abstract

A mass storage memory system is provided. The memory system includes, re-programmable non-volatile memory cells arranged in a plurality of blocks of memory cells; and a controller that is adapted to receive data via a first interface, and/or a second interface, and data received via the first interface and the second interface is accessible via the first interface and the second interface even if a file name for the data is not provided by a host system or before a write operation is complete. The first interface is a file based interface and the second interface is a logical interface.

Claims

1. A mass storage memory system, comprising:

re-programmable non-volatile memory cells arranged in a plurality of blocks of;

memory cells; and

a controller that is adapted to receive files of data individually via a first interface, identified by unique identifiers and received file data is stored in one or more memory blocks and indexed based on the unique identifiers;

wherein the controller assigns a plurality of logical block addresses to the received file data and updates file allocation table (“

FAT”

) entries that are stored in blocks of memory cells such that the file data received via the first interface is accessible via a second interface.

2. The memory system of claim 1, wherein logical block address assignment and FAT update is performed by an embedded file system with a file output interface that is specific to a file storage back-end system.

3. The memory system of claim 1, wherein logical block address allocation and FAT update is performed by an embedded file system that is similar to host system'"'"'s logical block address based file system.

4. The memory system of claim 2, wherein the embedded file system is a file to logical converter.

5. The memory system of claim 1, wherein the first interface is a file based interface.

6. The memory system of claim 1, wherein the second interface is a logical interface.

7. The memory system of claim 1, wherein data is stored as files in the plurality of non-volatile memory cells.

8. A mass storage memory system, comprising:

re-programmable non-volatile memory cells arranged in a plurality of blocks of memory cells; and

a controller that is adapted to receive data identified by plurality of logical addresses via a first interface which causes the data to be stored in one or more memory cells as a file and is accessible via a second interface even if a file name for the data is not provided by a host system.

9. The memory system of claim 8, wherein the controller assigns internal file names to the data and merges the internal file names to a single file name based on a file name that is provided by the host system that sends the data via the first interface.

10. The memory system of claim 9, wherein the internal file names are based on logical block addresses for the data.

11. The memory system of claim 8, wherein the first interface is a logical interface.

12. The memory system of claim 8, wherein the second interface is a file based interface.

13. A mass storage memory system, comprising:

re-programmable non-volatile memory cells arranged in a plurality of blocks of memory cells; and

a controller that is adapted to receive data identified by a plurality of logical addresses via a first interface which causes the data to be stored in one or more memory cells as a file and is accessible via a second interface even if a file name for the data is not provided by a host system, wherein the controller assigns internal file names to the data and merges the internal file names to a single file name based on a file name after a file name is provided by the host system that sends the data via the first interface.

14. The memory system of claim 13, wherein the first interface is a logical interface.

15. The memory system of claim 13, wherein the second interface is a file based interface.

16. The memory system of claim 13, wherein the internal file names are based on logical block addresses for the data.

17. The memory system of claim 13, wherein data is stored as files in the plurality of non-volatile memory cells.

18. A mass storage memory system, comprising:

re-programmable non-volatile memory cells arranged in a plurality of blocks of memory cells; and

a controller that is adapted to receive data via a first interface, and/or a second interface, and data received via the first interface and the second interface is accessible via the first interface and the second interface even if a file name for the data is not provided by a host system or before a write operation is complete.

19. The memory device of claim 18, wherein data received via the first interface is file data identified by unique identifiers and is stored in one or more memory blocks.

20. The memory system of claim 19, wherein the controller assigns a plurality of logical block addresses to the received file data and updates file allocation table (“

FAT”

) entries that are stored in blocks of memory cells such that the file data received via the first interface is accessible via the second interface.

21. The memory system of claim 18, wherein the data received via the second interface is identified by a plurality of logical addresses and the controller causes the data to be stored in one or more memory cells as a file.

22. The memory system of claim 20, wherein logical block address assignment and FAT update is performed by an embedded file system with a file output interface that is specific to a file storage back-end system.

23. The memory system of claim 20, wherein logical block address allocation and FAT update is performed by an embedded file system that is similar to host system'"'"'s logical block address based file system.

24. The memory system of claim 23, wherein the embedded file system is a file to logical converter.

25. The memory system of claim 18, wherein the controller assigns internal file names to the data received via the second interface and merges the internal file names to a single file name based on a file name provided by the host system that sends the data via the second interface.

26. The memory system of claim 25, wherein the internal file names are based on logical block addresses for the data received via the second interface.

27. The memory system of claim 18, wherein the data is stored as files in the plurality of non-volatile memory cells.

28. The memory system of claim 18, wherein the first interface is a file based interface.

29. The memory system of claim 18, wherein the second interface is a logical interface.

30. A mass storage memory system, comprising:

re-programmable non-volatile memory cells arranged in a plurality of blocks of memory cells; and

a controller that is adapted to receive files of data individually via a first interface, identified by unique identifiers and the received file data is stored in one or more memory blocks and the controller assigns a plurality of logical block addresses to the received file data and updates file allocation table (“

FAT”

) entries that are stored in blocks of memory cells, wherein the FAT update and logical block address assignment is performed substantially in real time, and the file data received via the first interface is accessible via a second interface.

31. The memory system of claim 30, wherein the FAT update and logical block address allocation is performed after a write operation is completed via the first interface, instead of being performed substantially in real time.

32. The memory system of claim 30, wherein logical block address allocation and FAT update is performed by an embedded file system with a file output interface that is specific to a file storage back-end system.

33. The memory system of claim 30, wherein logical block address allocation and FAT update is performed by an embedded file system that is similar to host system'"'"'s logical block address based file system.

34. The memory system of claim 33, wherein the embedded file system is a file to logical converter.

35. The memory of claim 30, wherein the controller is adapted to receive data identified by a plurality of logical addresses via the second interface which causes the data to be stored in one or more memory cells as a file and is accessible via the first interface even if a file name is not provided by the host system.

36. The memory system of claim 35, wherein the controller assigns internal file names to the data received via the second interface and merges the internal file names to a single file name based on a file name that is provided by a host system that sends the data.

37. The memory system of claim 35, wherein indexing information for data written via the first interface and/or the second interface is stored in the memory cells and is continuously updated keeping the first interface and the second interface synchronized.

38. The memory system of claim 30, wherein any data written via the first interface or the second interface is uniquely identified by a logical block address and a file identifier and is accessible via the first interface or the second interface.

39. The memory system of claim 30, wherein a directory and FAT entries are created by a file system maintained by the memory system for a file written via the first interface.

40. The memory system of claim 30, wherein the file system maintained by the memory system is similar to a file system maintained by a host system that sends data via the second interface.

41. The memory system of claim 30, wherein the first interface is a file based interface.

42. The memory system of claim 30, wherein the second interface is a logical interface.

43. The memory system of claim 30, wherein data is stored as files in the plurality of non-volatile memory cells.