Disk drive data protection system

摘要

The present invention provides a method and apparatus for assuring that the desired data is transferred between a variable rate disk drive and a host system during read and write operations. The invention involves retaining a variable amount of data in a buffer memory after the data has been transferred between the buffer memory and a magnetic disk with the variable amount of data retained based upon a predetermined fixed period of time associated with error conditions and a disk transfer rate. If an error condition is detected during a transfer of data between the buffer memory and the disk, all of the retained data may be retransferred after the error condition has been corrected.