KR100417224B1 - How to Overlay a Program on a Hard Disk Drive - Google Patents

Abstract

1. TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION The invention described in the claims relates to a hard disk drive, and more particularly to a method in which a given program can be overlaid on volatile memory.

The technical problem to be solved by the present invention is to provide a method for overlaying a program recorded in a specific area on the disk to the volatile memory to increase the program storage capacity of the hard disk drive using a single nonvolatile memory .

3. Summary of Solution of the Invention: During the production process, the control program is recorded with the security code in a specific system cylinder area on the disk, and when the drive is driven, the control program is read from the system cylinder area and stored in the volatile memory and executed. It is characterized by.

4. Important use of the invention: It can be used to increase the program of the hard disk drive.

Description

How to overlay programs on your hard disk drive.

TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to hard disk drives, and more particularly, to a method capable of overlaying certain programs on volatile memory.

A hard disk drive is a device for magnetically recording data on a rotating disk or reading data recorded on a disk, and is widely used as a secondary memory device of a computer system because a large amount of data can be accessed at high speed. Accordingly, researches for implementing high speed and high capacity hard disk drives have been actively conducted. As a result, control methods for hard disk drives have become complicated, and externally required functions have been diversified. Due to the above-described reasons, various tests are required after the assembling of the hard disk drive is completed, and the requirements may vary depending on the vendor who purchases the product. In addition, the derivative model can be diversified in the development stage of the hard disk drive. To store the above-described various requirements in one memory, a large amount of memory is required. This causes a cost increase of the hard disk drive, and when a program error occurs, it is difficult to correct the error. Hard disk drive manufacturers typically design hard disk drives using ROM, a single memory, because of the simplicity of the design itself. Therefore, in the hard disk drive using a single memory, in addition to the above-mentioned disadvantages of cost increase and error correction, the following problems occur. If we assume that different ROMs are used by each vendor, it is difficult to control various ROMs in the production line, and errors in programs modified by one vendor may not be reflected in other vendors' ROMs. In addition, since the ROM version is changed when the program is modified to modify a certain part of the test process, it has a disadvantage of having to go through the vendor's approval process even though it has no relation to the function of the actual hard disk drive.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a method for overlaying a program recorded in a specific area on a disk, which is a recording medium, onto a volatile memory.

It is still another object of the present invention to provide a method for increasing program storage capacity of a hard disk drive using a single nonvolatile memory.

The present invention for achieving the above object is a program overlay method of a hard disk drive having a disk and a volatile memory in which a predetermined program is recorded on the disk,

Moving the head to a system cylinder in which the predetermined program is recorded when driving power of the hard disk drive is applied;

Reading a program from the system cylinder and storing the program in the volatile memory;

And a process of executing a program stored in the volatile memory.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. Many specific details, such as specific process flows, are set forth in the following description to provide a more general understanding of the invention. It will be apparent to those skilled in the art that the present invention may be practiced without these specific details. And detailed descriptions of well-known functions and configurations that may unnecessarily obscure the subject matter of the present invention will be omitted.

1 is a block diagram of a general hard disk drive. In FIG. 1, the disk 10 is rotated by a spindle motor 32 and records the data transmitted from the host computer in a magnetic form. In addition, for the implementation of the present invention, a specific program on the disc 10 is allocated in the production process step so that a predetermined program can be written. In this case, the specific area is called a system cylinder. The head 12 is located on the corresponding one of the disks 10 and has disks from the E-block assembly 14 coupled with a rotary voice coil motor (VCM) 28. 10. The preamplifier 16 preamplifies the signal picked up by one of the heads 12 during data read and outputs the analog read signal to the read / write channel (read). / write channel circuit 18, and when writing data, one of the heads 12 drives the encoded write data applied from the read / write channel circuit 18. To write to the disc. At this time, the preamplifier 16 selects one of the heads 12 under the control of the disk data controller (DDC) 34 controlled by the microcontroller 22. The read / write channel circuit 18 detects and decodes a data pulse from a read signal applied from the preamplifier 16 to generate read data RDATA, and decodes the write data WDATA applied from the DDC 34 to decode the preamplifier ( 16). The read / write channel circuit 18 also demodulates head position information which is part of the servo information recorded on the disk to generate a position error signal (PES). PES generated from the read / write channel circuit 18 is applied to an analog-to-digital converter 20, and the A / D converter 20 sets the PES to a digital step value corresponding to its level. The microcontroller 22 converts the data to the microcontroller 22. The DDC 34 is controlled by the microcontroller 22 and writes data received from the host computer onto the disk 10 via the read / write channel circuit 18 and the preamplifier 16 or on the disk 10. The data is read from and sent to the host computer. The DDC 34 also interfaces the communication between the host computer and the microcontroller 22. The microcontroller 22 controls the DDC 34 in response to read or write commands received from the host computer and controls track searching and track following. At this time, the microcontroller 18 controls the track tracking as described above using the PES value applied from the A / D converter 20. The microcontroller 22 includes a ROM in which a control program of a hard disk drive is embedded and a RAM temporarily storing a program read from a specific system cylinder on the disk 10. The digital-to-analog converter 24 converts the control value U for position control of the heads 10 generated from the microcontroller 22 into an analog signal. The VCM driver 26 generates a driving current I (t) for driving the actuator by a signal applied from the D / A converter 24 and applies it to the VCM 28. The VCM 28 moves the heads 12 on the disks 10 in correspondence with the direction and level of the driving current input from the VCM driver 26. The spindle motor driver 30 rotates the disks 10 by driving the spindle motor 32 in accordance with a control value for the rotation control of the disks 10 generated from the microcontroller 22.

FIG. 2 is a flow chart of the microcontroller 22 for explaining a program overlay process as an embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, the system cylinder area on the disk 10 is recorded. A process of overlaying a predetermined program on RAM will be described.

First, in order to implement the present invention, the control program of the hard disk drive is recorded in the system cylinder area on the disk 10 together with the security code in accordance with the test process or vendor requirements in the hard disk drive production process step. In order to execute a control program (hereinafter referred to as a program) recorded in the system cylinder area together with the security code, the microcontroller 22 should have the following overlay program on the ROM. Hereinafter, a control process according to the overlay program will be described. First, when driving power is applied to the hard disk drive, the microcontroller 22 initializes variables and registers of the drive in step 40 and then proceeds to step 42. In step 42, the microcontroller 22 moves the head 12 to the system cylinder area and then reads the program in step 44. In this case, the program to be read may be selectively read according to a test process or a vendor's request under the control of the microcontroller 22. On the other hand, the microcontroller 22 checks whether an error occurs when reading a program and whether the read program is normal in steps 46 and 48, respectively. If the read error black or the lead program is abnormal, the microcontroller 22 reports the drive error status to the host computer. On the other hand, if the read result does not occur and the read program is normal, the microcontroller 22 proceeds to step 50 and stores the read program on the RAM volatile memory and proceeds to step 52. Thereafter, in step 52, the microcontroller 22 executes a program stored in the RAM to control the hard disk drive according to vendor requirements or a test process.

As described above, the present invention can increase the program storage capacity of a hard disk drive using a single nonvolatile memory by executing the control program recorded in a specific cylinder area on the disk in the production process by overlaying it on the volatile memory when the drive is driven. There is an advantage. In addition, the program recorded in the system cylinder area is replaceable, which has the advantage of meeting various vendor demands.

1 is a block diagram of a general hard disk drive.

2 is a control flowchart of a microcontroller 22 for explaining a program overlay process as an embodiment of the present invention.

Claims (3)

A program overlay method of a hard disk drive having a disk on which a predetermined program is recorded on a disk and volatile memory, the method comprising: Writing a predetermined program together with the security code to a specific system cylinder area on the disk; Moving the head to a system cylinder in which the predetermined program is recorded when driving power of the hard disk drive is applied; Reading a program from the system cylinder and storing the program in the volatile memory; And overlaying the program stored in the volatile memory. The method of claim 1, wherein the predetermined program is recorded together with a security code as a control program of the hard disk drive. The method of claim 2, wherein the program read from the system cylinder is selectively read according to a test process or a vendor's request and stored in the volatile memory.