Method of controlling hard disk cache to reduce power consumption of hard disk drive used in battery powered computer

摘要

A method of controlling a hard disk cache in a computer having a hard disk drive which is controlled by a write back mode disk cache that reduces the amount of hard disk access includes: initializing a disk cache control program loaded during the software booting by an operating system; determining whether insertion of a new cell in the disk cache is available if an interrupt is invoked responsive to a write request; writing data contained within all cache cells stored in the disk cache into the hard disk drive and inserting the new cell of the write request data into the disk cache if a new cache cell is not available. With this, restricting access to the hard disk drive is possible, which result in reducing power consumption of a hard disk drive motor. Further, losing of data in the cache is prevented when a sudden system power failure or reset occurs.