Seagate Assigned Seven Patents

Data management in a storage system
Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,443,165) developed by four co-inventors for a "data management in a storage system."

The co-inventors are Jonathan Williams Haines, Boulder, CO, Brett Alan Cook, Westminster, CO, Timothy Richard Feldman, Louisville, CO, and Paul Michael Wiggins, Longmont, CO.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "An exemplary method includes receiving a command for storing data to a plurality of storage resources, storing the data in a set of buffer storage locations, defining a plurality of jobs for the command, each of the plurality of jobs having an associated data operation with at least one of the storage resources, and reallocating a subset of the buffer storage locations that stored the data for a completed job prior to completion of at least one other job."

The patent application was filed on May 8, 2012 (13/466,397).

HDD drive and servo track writing system for the same
Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,437,099) developed by five co-inventors for a "HDD drive and servo track writing system for the same."

The co-inventors are Kyung-ho Kim, Dong-ho Oh, Ha-yong Kim, Sung-joon Han, and Kwang-jo Jung, Suwon-si, South Korea.

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A HDD drive includes a housing including a base member and a cover member, a spindle motor disposed in the housing, a storage disk disposed on the spindle motor, an actuator disposed in the housing to move a R/W head to a position on the storage disk, a clock signal providing unit disposed on the storage disk to provide a clock signal of the storage disk, a position signal providing unit disposed on the actuator to provide a position signal of the actuator, and first and second windows disposed in the housing to correspond to the clock signal providing unit and the position signal providing unit."

The patent application was filed on April 29, 2009 (12/431,963).

Control and generation of programming voltages
for solid-state data memory devices
Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,468,379) developed by Jon David Trantham, Chanhassen, MN, for "systems, methods and devices for control and generation of programming voltages for solid-state data memory devices."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "In one embodiment, a SSD contains a plurality of data memory devices requiring elevated voltages for erasure and programming operations. A common voltage regulator, external to the data memory devices, provides the elevated voltage, thereby reducing the overall power consumption of the storage device."

The patent application was filed on June 26, 2009 (12/492,951).

Write fringing reduction for recording media
Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,462,463) developed by Mourad Benakli, Eden Prairie, MN, and Michael Mallary, Sterling, MA, for a "write fringing reduction for recording media."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A recording media design having discrete track recording structure where the trenches between tracks are filled with a soft magnetic material is provided. The soft magnetic material provides a low magnetic impedance path to the soft underlayer such that fringe fields from the write head are conducted to the soft underlayer without having a negative effect such as adjacent track erasure. A method of manufacturing the media includes a nano-imprint step and ion milling out the data layer to create the trenches. A B.sub.2O.sub.3 material allows the data layer to be ion milled out without redeposition bridging the B.sub.2O.sub.3 layer thus preventing lift off of the mask. The trenches are then filled by ion deposition with the layers of ferromagnetic material separated by an anti-ferromagnetic coupling that causes the flux to be conducted to the soft underlayer and remnant flux to rotate within the island and not into adjacent tracks."

The patent application was filed on Aug. 14, 2012 (13/585,625).

Garbage collection in a storage device
Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,458,417) developed by Ryan J. Goss, Lakeville, MN, Kevin Gomez, Eden Prairie, MN, and Mark Allen Gaertner, Vadnais Heights, MN, for a "garbage collection in a storage device."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "In general, this disclosure relates to garbage collection in a storage device. Aspects of this disclosure describe techniques to identify one or more candidate memory storage blocks that should be recycled during garbage collection. The one or more candidate memory storage blocks may be identified based at least on monitored soft metrics of the candidate memory storage blocks. During garbage collection, the identified one or more candidate memory storage blocks may be recycled to free up storage space."

The patent application was filed on March 10, 2010 (12/721,466).

Logical block storage in storage device
Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,438,361) developed by Ryan J. Goss, Lakeville, MN, Kevin Gomez, Eden Prairie, MN, and Mark Allen Gaertner, Vadnais Heights, MN, for a "logical block storage in a storage device."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "In general, this disclosure relates to storage of logical blocks in a storage device. Aspects of this disclosure describe techniques to monitor the frequency of access of one or more logical blocks referenced by one or more logical block addresses. Based on the frequency of access, in non-limiting aspects of this disclosure, a controller may select one or more physical blocks of a common memory storage block. The storage device may store the logical blocks in the selected physical blocks."

The patent application was filed on March 10, 2010 (12/721,490).

Restricted erase and unlock of storage devices
Seagate Technology LLC, Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,438,652) developed by Robert E. Weinstein, Berthoud, CO, and Monty A. Forehand, Loveland, CO, for a "restricted erase and unlock of storage devices."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A storage device in which access to user data is restricted. The storage device includes a data memory having memory locations that store user data. The device also has a program memory. The program memory includes first program code that enables a user to create a first device security ID and thereby restrict access to the stored data. Second program code, also included in the program memory, is capable of receiving a security command and comparing a second device security ID associated with the received security command to a stored security key. If the second device security ID and the stored security key correspond, then authentication with the first device security ID is bypassed and access is provided to the stored data."

The patent application was filed on March 23, 2007 (11/728,320).