Steve Mccarthy

US Patent:

6924952, Aug 2, 2005

Filed:

Aug 6, 2001

Appl. No.:

09/923910

Inventors:

Don Brunnett - Pleasanton CA, US
Uwe Schwiegelshohn - Herdecke, DE
Steve McCarthy - Mead CO, US

Assignee:

Maxtor Corporation - Longmont CO

International Classification:

G11B005/09

US Classification:

360 48

Abstract:

A method and apparatus for increasing formatting efficiency of a disk drive is disclosed. In one embodiment, a method for storing data in a disk drive is provided. The disk drive is coupled to a computer via an interface. The method includes the steps of storing data on a disk surface in a disk block having a predetermined length; and, presenting data from the disk drive to the interface as a host block having a predetermined length, wherein the predetermined length of the disk block is equal to N times the predetermined length of the host block, where N is a natural number greater than 1. In one embodiment, a read/modify/write procedure is provided to ensure that data is not lost when a power failure occurs during a write operation when the number of host blocks being written is not a multiple of N.