TRANSPARENT RECORD ACCESS MANAGER FOR A DISK DRIVE

摘要

In a disk drive, a transparent record access manager centralizes access to system cylinder records in two global routines for reading and writing to the system cylinder records, and a system cylinder table which maintains address information for the system cylinder records. Internal firmware system cylinder record users and host software programs access system cylinder records through the system cylinder record manager, which in turn locates system cylinder records through the system cylinder table. The transparent record access manager makes any changes to the address or length of a particular system cylinder record transparent to the users of all other system cylinder records. An ATA command process allows a host processor to access a system cylinder record through the read and write routines, or to recieve the system cylinder table from the disk drive.