Apple Assigned Two Patents

HDD shock event detection
Apple Corp., Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,482,876) developed by Thomas R. Colligan, San Jose, CA, for a "method and device for HDD shock event detection."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A method and system for sensing the current applied to the motor of a storage device and determining whether a shock event has occurred by processing the sensed current levels."

The patent application was filed on Jan. 25, 2012 (13/358,288).

Efficient storage in storage device arrays
Apple Corp., Cupertino, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,473,780) developed by Ofir Shalvi, Raanana, Israel, for an "efficient storage in storage device arrays."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A method for storage includes encoding data with an inter-device ECC (ECC), and sending the encoded data for storage on two or more storage devices. The data to be stored on each of the storage devices, and which has been encoded with the inter-device ECC, is encoded with an intra-device ECC, and the data encoded with the inter-device and intra-device ECCs is stored on the storage device. After storing the data, at least part of the stored data is retrieved and output by decoding the intra-device and inter-device ECCs, while using information related to one of the intra-device and inter-device ECCs in decoding the other of the intra-device and inter-device ECCs."

The patent application was filed on July 2, 2012 (13/539,734).