Imation Assigned Patent

Imation Corp., Oakdale, MN, has been assigned a patent (9,104,891) developed by Hamid, Laurence, and Ashdown, Scott, Ottawa, Canada, for a “recovering from unexpected flash drive removal.”

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: ”Techniques for recovering from unexpected removal of, (or other unexpected power loss) a flash memory device from a computer system. An interpolated device driver notes whenever the flash memory device is unexpectedly removed, or otherwise unexpectedly powers off or enters a locked state. If the flash memory device is reinserted, the interpolated device driver reinitializes the flash memory device, and satisfies any flash memory device security protocol, so the flash memory device and the computer system can be restored to their status just before unexpected removal. The interpolated device driver caches requests to the flash memory device, and when status is restored to just before removal, replays those requests to the flash memory device, so the flash memory device responds to those requests as if it had ever been removed. The computer system does not notice any break in service by the flash memory device due to removal and reinsertion.“

The patent application was filed on December 3, 2012 (13/692,358).