Hitachi GST Assigned Patent

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, has been assigned a patent (8,238,051) developed by Peter M. Baumgart, Robert E. Eaton, and Bernhard E. Knigg, San Jose, CA, for a "real time monitoring inconsistent operations in a hard disk drive."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Real time monitoring inconsistent operations in a hard disk drive, wherein the hard disk drive comprises a magnetic disk, a controller and a channel clock. A timing signal from the channel clock is measured in real time in the controller. Time intervals between sector identifier marks of the magnetic disk are detected using the timing signal from the channel clock during reading and writing operations of the hard disk drive in the controller. An inconsistency in the drive operations is detected in the controller based on changes in the time intervals between the sector identifier marks is detected during operation of the hard disk drive. The detection of the inconsistency in the drive operations is responded to."

The patent application was filed on Dec. 8, 2009 (12/633,518).