Seagate Assigned Five Patents

Thermally insulated suspension load beam

Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,395,865) developed by Krishna Prashanth Anandan, Edina, MN, for a "thermally insulated suspension load beam."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A suspension load beam for use in supporting a transducer head in a storage system includes a front beam section, a rear beam section, and a middle beam section. The front beam section is configured to connect to a slider assembly carrying a transducer head. The rear beam section is configured to connect to an actuator arm. The middle beam section is located between the front beam section and the rear beam section. The middle beam section comprises a top thermal insulation layer, a bottom thermal insulation layer and a rigid layer between the top and bottom thermal insulation layers."

The patent application was filed on Jan. 10, 2006 (11/328,556).

Garbage collection management in a storage device

Seagate Technology LLC, Scotts Valley, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,417,904) developed by Ryan James Goss, Lakeville, MN, and Mark Allen Gaertner, Vadnais Heights, MN, for a "garbage collection management in a storage device."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "Method and apparatus for handling data in a storage device. In accordance with some embodiments, a memory space with a plurality of garbage collection units (GCUs) that are each arranged into pages of memory that store user data identified by logical addresses (LAs) and each GCU has a metadata region that stores metadata that correlates the LAs with physical addresses (PAs). A header region in each page of memory stores a bitmask and a sequence map of the LAs in each page that are used by a log manager to creates a bitmask table stored in a first cache and a hierarchical log stored in a second cache. The bitmask table and hierarchical log are used to determine when the LAs stored in the selected GCU are stale, and update the bitmask for each page in the selected GCU after the stale data has been erased."

The patent application was filed on March 17, 2010 (12/725,755).

Concurrent actions for storage

Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,417,839) developed by six co-inventors for a "concurrent actions for storage."

The co-inventors are Keow Seng Ng, Vincent Michael McGarry, Abhay Tejmal Kataria, Lace J. Herman, Longmont, CO, Dennis A. Rubsam, Denver, CO, and Steven Scott Williams, Longmont, CO.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "The disclosure is related to systems and methods of concurrent actions for storage. A controller may be configured to initialize a first storage medium and a second storage medium. The controller may receive a command when the first storage medium is initialized but before the second storage medium is initialized. The controller may service the command when the command utilizes the first storage medium and the initialization for the second storage medium is not complete. A controller may also be configured to send an indicator to a host that the system is ready to receive commands when a first storage device is initialized, but a second storage device is still in an initialization process."

The patent application was filed on March 31, 2011 (13/076,579).

Adaptive resource controlled write-back aging
for storage device

Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (RE44,128) developed by Edwin S. Olds, Fort Collins, CO, Travis D. Fox, Harrah, OK, and Mark A. Thiessen, Mustang, OK, for an "adaptive resource controlled write-back aging for a storage device."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A method for determining an aging period for retaining a write-back data in a cache memory prior to writing the write-back data to a storage media is determined through use of a write-back aging routine. The aging period is based on a proportional utilization level of the cache memory by the write-back data, the higher the memory utilization level, the shorter the period for aging the write-back data. The aging period takes a form of an aging threshold, which differs depending on the memory utilization level, i.e., the amount of cache memory utilized by the write-back data. The method includes, identifying the memory utilization level, selecting the data aging threshold based on the memory utilization level; and writing the data from the cache memory to the storage media when an age of the data in the memory exceeds the selected data aging threshold."

The patent application was filed on Dec. 18, 2009 (12/642,157).

Storing data in MLC solid state storage device

Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,402,203) developed by Todd Ray Strope, Longmont, CO, for "systems and methods for storing data in a MLC solid state storage device."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "This disclosure is related to systems and methods for storing data in MLC solid state storage devices, such as flash memory devices. In one example, a MLC memory array has programmable pages, a first page having a first programming time, and a second page having a second programming time that is different than the first programming time. In one embodiment, the first programming time is faster than the second programming time. Further, a controller coupled to the MLC memory array may be configured to select the first page to store the data when a priority level of a write operation indicates a first priority level and select the second page to store the data when the priority level indicates a second priority level."

The patent application was filed on Dec. 31, 2009 (12/650,712).