System, apparatus, and method for using a disk drive for sequential data access

摘要

The invention includes a disk drive that includes a controller that is connected to a physical media. The controller includes a processor that is connected a controller memory. The disk drive is responsive to communication from a host computer. The controller memory includes a set of computer program instructions and data to write data to the disk drive memory as a linear sequence of data bytes in response to a write data command from the computer. In yet other embodiments, the invention uses hardware data compression to compress data before it is written to a disk drive, and to decompress data before compressed data is returned to a computer.