Seagate Assigned Patent

Seagate Technology LLC, Scotts Valley, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,255,617) developed by Ryan James Goss, Lakeville, MN, and Mark Allen Gaertner, Vadnais Heights, MN, for "maintaining data integrity in a data storage device."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Method and apparatus for maintaining data integrity in a data storage device. In accordance with some embodiments, a memory space has a plurality of garbage collection units (GCUs) each arranged to store user data identified by logical addresses. Each GCU has a metadata region that stores metadata that correlates the logical addresses LBAs with physical addresses and a header region that stores descriptor data that identifies LBAs stored in the associated GCU. A control circuit identifies an error in the metadata from the descriptor data of a selected GCU and rebuilds the metadata to indicate a storage location of a most current version of data associated with a selected logical address."

The patent application was filed on Jan. 26, 2010 (12/693,716).