Western Digital Assigned Patent

Western Digital Technologies, Irvine, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,838,995) developed by Alan T. Meyer, Anaheim Hills, CA, Kenny T. Coker, Corona, CA, and Daniel D. Reno, Morgan Hill, CA, for “physically modifying a storage device to disable access to secure data and repurpose the storage device.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A storage device is disclosed comprising a non-volatile memory and control circuitry operable to evaluate a physical feature of the storage device, wherein the physical feature is physically alterable by a user. When the physical feature is in a first state, host access to first secure data stored in the non-volatile memory is enabled, and when the physical feature is in a second state, the host access to the first secure data is disabled and host access to second data stored in the non-volatile memory is enabled.”

The patent application was filed on May 29, 2009 (12/475,340).