Method and apparatus for limiting soft error recovery in a disk drive data storage device

• US 6,631,493 B2
• Filed: 08/08/2002
• Issued: 10/07/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 04/20/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Smith, Gordon James, Ottesen, Hal Hjallmar
• Primary Examiner(s): Peikari, B. James
• Application Number:
  US10/215,409
• Publication Number:
  US 20030051097A1
• Time in Patent Office: 425 Days
• Field of Search: 711/112, 714/2, 714/5, 714/6, 714/7, 714/8, 714/42, 714/44, 714/48, 714/54, 714/769, 714/770, 714/774, 360/47, 360/51, 360/53, 360/55, 360/77.04, 369/30.21, 369/30.36, 369/47.14, 369/53.12, 369/53.15, 369/53.17, 369/53.35, 369/93
• US Class Current: 714/774
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1096 Parity calculation or recalculation after configuration or reconfiguration of the system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2003/0697 device management, e.g. handlers, drivers, I/O schedulers
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2211/1016 Continuous RAID, i.e. RAID system that allows streaming or continuous media, e.g. VOD
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2211/103 Hybrid, i.e. RAID systems with parity comprising a mix of RAID types
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0601 Interfaces specially adapted for storage systems
• CPC Class Codes: G11B 20/1833 by adding special lists or symbols to the coded information G11B20/1806, G11B20/1866 take precedence

Abstract

A disk drive has on-board soft error recovery procedures for recovering data following a soft error, and the capability to selectively disable or limit this feature. Preferably, a set of data storage devices are used to store heterogeneous data, i.e., to store some alphanumeric data, and some multimedia data. If a disk drive is selected for storage of multimedia data, the soft error recovery is disabled, and soft errors are simply transmitted to the host system as data. If each disk surface may be independently allocated to data of different types, soft error recovery may be independently disabled for each disk surface.

Claims

1. A method for managing the storage of data on a rotating magnetic disk drive data storage device, comprising the steps of:

determining that a portion of said rotating magnetic disk drive data storage device contains only data of a first type, said data of a first type requiring less than full soft error recovery; and

disabling at least one soft error recovery step for said portion of said rotating magnetic disk drive responsive to said determination.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said data of a first type is non-alphanumeric data.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said portion of said rotating magnetic disk drive is the entire disk drive.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said portion of said rotating magnetic disk drive is a recording surface of said disk drive.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said disabling step disables all soft error recovery steps for said portion of said rotating magnetic disk drive.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein said disabling step disables all soft error recovery steps for said portion of said rotating magnetic disk drive after step N, where N is an integer greater than 0.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein said disabling step is performed by said rotating magnetic disk drive responsive to an external command received by said rotating magnetic disk drive.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein said rotating magnetic disk drive data storage device is one of a plurality of rotating magnetic disk drive data storage devices managed by an external management apparatus, said external management apparatus performing said determining step.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein said external management apparatus selects a rotating magnetic disk drive data storage device of said plurality of rotating magnetic disk drive data storage devices for storage of data based on a type of said data to be stored.

10. A rotating disk drive data storage device, comprising:

a disk drive base;

at least one rotatably mounted disk for recording data on at least one surface of said at least one rotatably mounted disk;

a movable actuator supporting at least one transducer head, said actuator positioning said at least one transducer head to access data on said at least one surface of said at least one rotatably mounted disk; and

a controller for controlling the operation of said disk drive data storage device, said controller including a soft error recovery function for recovering from soft errors detected during data access, said controller further including a disabling function which disables said soft error recovery function responsive to an external command from a host system;

wherein said disabling function includes the capability to disable said soft error recovery function with respect to data stored in selective individual portions of the data storage area of said disk drive, said individual portions being less than the entire data storage area of said disk drive.

11. The rotating disk drive data storage device of claim 10, wherein said disabling function includes a disable state variable, said state variable recording the current disable state, said state variable being altered by said disabling function responsive to an external command from a host system.

12. The rotating disk drive data storage device of claim 11, wherein said disable state variable comprises an array of values, each value of said array corresponding to a respective portion of storage area of said rotating disk drive data storage device.

13. The rotating disk drive data storage device of claim 10, wherein said disabling function disables all soft error recovery steps for said portion of said rotating disk drive data storage device.

14. The rotating disk drive data storage device of claim 10, wherein said soft error recovery steps are performed in a sequence, and wherein said disabling function disables all soft error recovery steps for said portion of said disk drive data storage device after step N in said sequence, where N is an integer greater than 0.

15. A control program for a rotating disk drive data storage device, comprising:

a plurality of processor-executable instructions recorded on signal-bearing media, wherein said instructions, when executed by at least one processor control apparatus of a rotating disk drive data storage device, cause the device to perform the steps of;

(a) performing a sequence of soft error recovery steps responsive to the detection of a soft error from performing of a data access operation during operation of said rotating disk drive data storage device, at least some of said soft error recovery steps involving re-performing said data access operation;

(b) receiving a soft error recovery function disable command from an external device; and

(c) disabling at least one soft error recovery step of said sequence of soft error recovery steps for at least a portion of said rotating disk drive storage device responsive to receiving said soft error recovery disable command, wherein at least one of the disabled soft error recovery steps involves re-performing said data access operation.

16. The control program for a rotating disk drive data storage device of claim 15, wherein said disabling step comprises selectively disabling said soft error recovery with respect to data stored on selective individual portions of the data storage area of said disk drive, said individual portions being less than the entire data storage area of said disk drive.

17. The control program for a rotating disk drive data storage device of claim 16, wherein said control program includes an array of disable state variables, each element of said array of disable state variables recording the current disable state of a corresponding respective portion of the data storage area of said rotating disk drive data storage device, said array of disable state variables being altered by said disabling step responsive to receiving said soft error function disable command.

18. The control program for a rotating disk drive data storage device of claim 15, wherein said disabling step disables all soft error recovery steps for said portion of said rotating disk drive data storage device.

19. The rotating disk drive data storage device of claim 15, wherein said disabling step disables all soft error recovery steps for said portion of said disk drive data storage device after step N in said sequence of steps, where N is an integer greater than 0.