Method for clipping hard drives while preserving full actuator arm movement

摘要

A hard disc drive (HDD) of a larger native capacity is clipped to emulate a smaller capacity drive by allocating storage space in tracks in at least both a radially innermost region and radially outermost region of the platter(s). During normal operation, when data is written to or read from the clipped HDD, the actuator arm will move through its entire, normal range of motion, as the read/write heads seek tracks in both the radially inner and outer regions of the platter(s). In some embodiments, storage space is also allocated from tracks in regions interposed between the inner and outer regions. In one embodiment, all tracks on the platter(s) are divided into regions of substantially equal data storage capacity, and the storage space is allocated for the clipped HDD is divided substantially evenly across all the regions.

主权项

1. A method of clipping a hard disc drive, the drive having a native data storage capacity arranged in a plurality of concentric tracks on one or more platters, the drive being clipped to have an effective storage capacity lower than the native capacity, the method comprising:
allocating for use only storage space up to the effective storage capacity, selected from storage space within the native storage capacity; and writing data to and reading data from only the allocated storage space, such that the drive is effectively limited to the effective capacity; wherein the effective storage capacity allocated for use comprises both first storage space in one or more tracks in a radially innermost region of the platter and second storage space in one or more tracks in a radially outermost region of the platter; whereby in operation, an actuator arm moves a read/write head between the radially innermost region and radially outermost region of the platter during data read and write operations.