Amazon Assigned Two Patents

Modular mass storage system
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Reno, NE, has been assigned a patent (8,743,549) developed by Darin Lee Frink, Lake Tapps, WA, and Peter G. Ross, Olympia, WA, for a “modular mass storage system.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system for storing data includes a rack, one or more storage modules coupled to the rack, and one or more data control modules coupled to the rack. The storage modules may include a chassis, two or more backplanes coupled to the chassis, and one or more mass storage devices (for example, HDD drives) coupled to the backplanes. The data control modules may access the mass storage devices in the storage modules.”

The patent application was filed on March 22, 2011 (13/069,065).

Disk sector failure prediction
Amazon Technologies, Inc., Reno, NE, has been assigned a patent (8,760,780) developed by Marc J. Brooker,  Seattle, WA, for a “system and method for disk sector failure prediction.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A system and method for predicting the likelihood of failure of the individual sectors of a magnetic storage disk based upon the monitoring of adjacent sector performance in responding to access requests. The prediction for a specific target sector’s fidelity can be made through the gathering of sector performance data that occurs during normal R/W actions to the adjacent sectors, without a recent access request necessarily being made to the target sector. Scrubbing of the sectors can also be directed based upon the needed sector access data for target sector fidelity prediction.”

The patent application was filed on March 22, 2012 (13/427,788).