sTec (WD/HGST) Assigned Patent
Prioritized erasure of data blocks in flash storage device
By Jean Jacques Maleval | October 20, 2014 at 3:01 pmsTec, Inc., Santa Ana, CA, has been assigned a patent (8,843,691) developed by William Calvert, Cranleigh, UK, Stephen Russell Boorman, Bookham, UK, and Simon Mark Haynes, Send, UK, for “prioritized erasure of data blocks in a flash storage device.”
The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Methods and systems for the prioritized erasure of data blocks in a flash storage device are provided. A data block in the flash storage device is selected for erasure based upon the number of valid data segments therein, thereby minimizing the number of data segments that are carried over to another data block before erasing the selected data block. The overhead of write operations in the flash storage device is therefore greatly reduced, and the overall performance thereof greatly increased. A method for managing memory operations in a flash storage device having a plurality of data blocks comprises the steps of selecting one of the plurality of data blocks for erasure based upon a number of valid data segments therein, and erasing the selected one of the plurality of data blocks.”
The patent application was filed on Dec. 23, 2008 (12/343,378).