376 results about "Flash drive" patented technology

A flash drive has increased endurance and longevity by reducing writes to flash. An Endurance Translation Layer (ETL) is created in a DRAM buffer and provides temporary storage to reduce flash wear. A Smart Storage Switch (SSS) controller assigns data-type bits when categorizing host accesses as paging files used by memory management, temporary files, File Allocation Table (FAT) and File Descriptor Block (FDB) entries, and user data files, using address ranges and file extensions read from FAT. Paging files and temporary files are never written to flash. Partial-page data is packed and sector mapped by sub-sector mapping tables that are pointed to by a unified mapping table that stores the data-type bits and pointers to data or tables in DRAM. Partial sectors are packed together to reduce DRAM usage and flash wear. A spare / swap area in DRAM reduces flash wear. Reference voltages are adjusted when error correction fails.

A computer apparatus such as a mouse, keyboard, or PC headset with additional devices disposed within the apparatus enclosure, which can enhance the functionality of such computer apparatus. In the preferred embodiment, the additional devices are disposed within or along the length of a mouse apparatus. The additional devices typically function independently of the mouse apparatus. However, the additional components may share one or more wired or wireless paths to a host PC and to other devices, or to a network. The additional devices either integrated within the mouse enclosure or removable from the mouse enclosure, include a wireless adapter (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G, GSM, etc. . . . ), RAM, ROM, a mini hard drive, a GPS receiver module, a flash memory, flash memory drive reader, a USB Hub, a Trackpoint™ device, a keyboard or keypad, a fingerprint reader, or a SIM card reader. Also disclosed, are software controls for mapping the mouse velocity to a cursor velocity and for controlling the function and settings of the Trackpoint device. Further disclosed is a method for assigning the mouse's data output to a variety of devices connected to a wired or wireless network.

Methods are provided for depositing a stack of film layers for use in vertical gates for 3D memory devices, by depositing a sacrificial nitride film layer at a sacrificial film deposition temperature greater than about 550° C.; depositing an oxide film layer over the nitride film layer, at an oxide deposition temperature of about 600° C. or greater; repeating the above steps to deposit a film stack having alternating layers of the sacrificial films and the oxide films; forming a plurality of holes in the film stack; and depositing polysilicon in the plurality of holes in the film stack at a polysilicon process temperature of about 700° C. or greater, wherein the sacrificial film layers and the oxide film layers experience near zero shrinkage during the polysilicon deposition. Flash drive memory devices may also be made by these methods.

To enable a capacity of an entire storage device to be kept by adding a flash drive or a flash module in the flash drive for a flash memory that has a failure, even if the storage device using the flash memory has a failure in its part such as a part of flash memory chip has a failure, for example, the flash memory chip has run out of its lifetime. In a storage device 101 equipped with two or more memory device units 105 with a plurality of semiconductor memory devices 107, each of which has a functional capacity unit 109 smaller than a capacity of an entire semiconductor memory device and has a writing lifetime for each functional capacity unit, only a functional capacity unit whose writing lifetime is run out to be determined as unable to be written is substituted by a functional capacity unit in a memory device of the other memory device unit to keep a predetermined capacity of the entire device.

A slim Universal-Serial-Bus (USB) connector fits on only one side of the connector substrate in a standard female USB connector. Wobble or vertical play is reduced by locking depressions in the slim USB connector that engage metal springs on a metal case that surrounds the female USB connector, locking the two connectors together. Between metal contacts on the slim USM connector are dividers that help fill in gaps when the two connectors are connected together, further reducing play. End rails on the slim USB connector fill in gaps on the sides. The connector substrate of the slim USB connector can be separate or can be integrated with a circuit board that holds a flash memory chip and a USB controller chip. The connector is wider than the standard width for a better fit. A slim female USB connector for use with the slim male USB connector is also disclosed.

A chainable Universal-Serial-Bus (USB) flash-memory drive has both a female USB connector and a male USB connector mounted on a printed-circuit board (PCB) substrate. A USB hub mounted on the substrate connects to a host through the male USB connector. One of the ports of the USB hub is connected to the female USB connector to allow the host to connect to downstream USB devices connected to the chainable USB flash-memory drive. Other ports of the USB hub connect to one or more flash controller chips that drive flash memory chips. The flash memory chips may be mounted on the substrate, or may be on daughter-cards that plug into sockets on the chainable USB flash-memory drive's substrate. The flash controller chip may be mounted on the drive substrate or on the daughter-cards. Several chainable USB flash-memory drives may be connected together in a daisy chain.

A flash drive has increased endurance and longevity by reducing writes to flash. An Endurance Translation Layer (ETL) is created in a DRAM buffer and provides temporary storage to reduce flash wear. A Smart Storage Switch (SSS) controller assigns data-type bits when categorizing host accesses as paging files used by memory management, temporary files, File Allocation Table (FAT) and File Descriptor Block (FDB) entries, and user data files, using address ranges and file extensions read from FAT. Paging files and temporary files are never written to flash. Partial-page data is packed and sector mapped by sub-sector mapping tables that are pointed to by a unified mapping table that stores the data-type bits and pointers to data or tables in DRAM. Partial sectors are packed together to reduce DRAM usage and flash wear. A spare / swap area in DRAM reduces flash wear. Reference voltages are adjusted when error correction fails.

A system and method comprising a non-volatile memory including one or more memory blocks to store data, a controller to allocate one or more of the memory blocks to store data, and a wear-leveling table populated with pointers to unallocated memory blocks in the non-volatile memory, the controller to identify one or more pointers in the wear-leveling table and to allocate the unallocated memory blocks associated with the identified pointers for the storage of data.

An electronic device includes a transceiver, a solid state memory, a charge port, at least one speaker, and a software music player. The device is adapted by toggle interface to function as a telephone hands free earpiece, a wireless flash drive, or a wireless music player.

A swivel-type computer peripheral device includes a housing and a swivel rack assembly that swivels relative to the housing between a retracted position, in which a PCBA having a plug connector mounted on the swivel rack assembly is disposed inside the housing, and a deployed position, in which the swivel rack assembly is rotated outside of the housing such that the plug connector is positioned for insertion into a host computer socket. A torsion spring is connected between the housing and the swivel rack assembly and arranged to bias the swivel rack assembly either into the deployed position or into the retracted position. A locking mechanism controlled by a push button or another actuating mechanism is used to selectively lock the swinging rack in a retracted position and a deployed position.

Systems and methods are described for storing a media stream on a storage medium, wherein the media stream is based upon at least one source file. An index file for the media stream is created, and the at least one source file is processed to create at least one media file that is stored on the storage medium. The index file is updated to reference at least a portion of the at least one media file, and the index file is stored on the storage medium. Such techniques may be useful, for example, in encoding information onto a disk drive, flash drive or other portable media compatible with a placeshifting audio / video player or the like.

A method, apparatus and computer programs for gathering data from business transactions conducted at a point of sale using a portable memory device, like, a removable USB flash memory drive. A customer gathers a plurality of a transaction and electronic receipt files by connecting the portable memory to a computer at the point of sale. Over a period of time, the customer consolidates the files into a second database. In one embodiment, the vendor reads an identification data of the customer from the portable memory and stores in a first database along with business transaction data. In another embodiment, the vendor searches for the electronic receipt in the portable memory for matching product identifier of a returned product to complete a return transaction. The apparatus comprises a portable memory connector with a connecting means for the customer to attach and detach the portable memory at the point of sale.

The invention claimed herein is a Multifunctional, All-in-one, Detachable Wrist Wireless Mobile Communication Device, which can be worn on the wrist, and used with a wireless earpiece for wireless communication needs. This device has a screen and / or buttons to operate the device, is detachable from its base if needed to be used like a regular mobile phone. This multifunctional device has all the mobile communication functions / features / capabilities such as audio, video, camera, media playback, secured wireless (or with an option to plug in) media / data storage capability, secured video / audio house / business / child monitoring features, dual solar charging and AC / DC / car charging capabilities, speaker phone capabilities, and GPS and satellite reception capabilities. All the features mentioned above and described in the specifications eliminates the need to carry a separate MP3 player, or headphones, or flash drive, as all this features are built in this device. By wearing this device, the user does not need to carry a separate mobile device that falls and gets damaged, or is lost or stolen or forgotten in cars and at home, and neither does the user need to locate the device in purses, pockets, or retrieve from holders to answer calls like most mobile phones in the market today. The device also comes with an option to be detached and hanged around the neck with the hanging device claimed herein, if preferred over wearing it on the wrist. It is a convenient, practical, all-in-one, next generation communication device that is readily available on the wrist to use, and thus is the all in one solution for all the communication / media / technology needs of today, and tomorrow.

A secured portable execution environment device could be provided by a business as a fee-based service, where a user selects applications that he wishes to license and methods of securing and backing up the execution environment. The device could be provided as a portable flash drive, which could then be plugged into any computer with any operating system to access the execution environment saved on the drive. When the user executes an application launcher on the flash drive and authenticates his identity, the application launcher allows the user to access secure applications saved on the flash drive and secure data saved in the application launcher environment.

A smart flash drive has one or more levels of smart storage switches and a lower level of single-chip flash devices (SCFD's). A SCFD contains flash memory and controllers that perform low-level bad-block mapping and wear-leveling and logical-to-physical block mapping. The SCFD report their capacity, arrangement, and maximum wear-level count (WLC) and bad block number (BBN) to the upstream smart storage switch, which stores this information in a structure register. The smart storage switch selects the SCFD with the maximum BBN as the target and the SCFD with the lowest maximum WLC as the source of a swap for wear leveling when a WLC exceeds a threshold that rises over time. A top-level smart storage switch receives consolidated capacity, arrangement, WLC, and BBN information from lower-level smart storage switch. Data is striped and optionally scrambled by Redundant Array of Individual Disks (RAID) controllers in all levels of smart storage switches.

To enable a capacity of an entire storage device to be kept by adding a flash drive or a flash module in the flash drive for a flash memory that has a failure, even if the storage device using the flash memory has a failure in its part such as a part of flash memory chip has a failure, for example, the flash memory chip has run out of its lifetime. In a storage device 101 equipped with two or more memory device units 105 with a plurality of semiconductor memory devices 107, each of which has a functional capacity unit 109 smaller than a capacity of an entire semiconductor memory device and has a writing lifetime for each functional capacity unit, only a functional capacity unit whose writing lifetime is run out to be determined as unable to be written is substituted by a functional capacity unit in a memory device of the other memory device unit to keep a predetermined capacity of the entire device.

A system and method for configuring a consumer electronic (CE) device that has an infrared (IR) receiver uses a portable configuration-file transfer device. The CE device may be part of a local area network (LAN) and the configuration file may include network setup parameters, including a network security key, and user personalization data representing user preferences. The configuration file is initially stored in a network hub or configuration controller, such as a PC, or may be downloaded into the hub or PC from a remote internet site. The transfer device has an interface compatible with an interface on the hub or PC to permit transfer of the configuration file, memory for storing the configuration file, and an IR transmitter for transmitting the configuration file to the IR receiver of the CE device. The transfer device may be a compact universal serial bus (USB) “flash drive” modified to include an IR transmitter and a battery for powering the IR transmitter.

Storage requirements of one or more applications may be serviced by a mix of different disk technologies across one or more storage tiers. According to the system described herein, desirable or optimal mixes of the different disks may be determined and used in the efficient and cost-effective modification or upgrade of storage arrays. For example, whereas SATA drives may be the most cost effective per gigabyte of storage, some applications may not be able to operate based on SATA performance characteristics. On the other hand, flash drives, which may have high performance characteristics, may be too expensive to be used exclusively in a storage array. The system described herein provides a tool that allows for optimal planning of storage resources in a multi-tier storage environment responsive to workload data of a storage array and based on performance characteristics and costs of the storage resources.

Disclosed is a method for managing logical block write requests for a flash drive. The method includes receiving a logical block write request from a file system; assigning a category to the logical block; and generating at least three writes from the logical block write request, a first write writes the logical block to an Erasure Unit (EU) according to the category assigned to each logical block, a second write inserts a Block Mapping Table (BMT) update entry to a BMT update log, and a third write commits the BMT update entry to an on-disk BMT, wherein the first and second writes are performed synchronously and the third write is performed asynchronously and in a batched fashion.

A flash-drive or flash-card reader connects to a personal computer (PC) through a serial link such as a Universal-Serial-Bus (USB), IEEE 1394, SATA, or IDE. A local CPU acts as the bus master of a CPU bus that connects to slave ports on a flash-memory controller, a serial engine, and a RAM buffer. A second bus in parallel to the CPU bus connects a second slave port on the RAM buffer to a master port on the flash-memory controller and to a master port on the serial engine. The flash-memory controller or the serial engine can use their master ports to transfer data to and from the RAM buffer using the second bus, allowing the CPU to retain control of the CPU bus. The second bus is a flash-serial buffer bus that improves data transfer rates. The flash-memory controller can prefetch into the RAM buffer.

The invention discloses an intranet-extranet physical isolation data exchange method based on QR (quick response) code. The method of exchanging data from an intranet to an extranet includes: firstly, extracting data to be exchanged in an intranet database, encoding the data to generate a plurality of QR code images, and regularly arranging and displaying the images on a display screen of intranet system terminal equipment in a form of QR code matrix; secondly, using a camera of extranet system terminal equipment to acquire the matrix-type irregularly arranged QR code images displayed on the display screen of the intranet system terminal equipment; and thirdly decoding acquired QR code sequences by parallel algorithm on the extranet system terminal equipment so as to obtain exchanged data. The method has the advantages that such defects as high precise and need for labor in existing traditional exchange methods of gateway copying or USB (universal serial bus) flash drive copying, the method is high in reliability, high in safety and low in operation and maintenance cost, exchange time is shortened, and efficiency in intranet-extranet data exchange is improved.

Bootability of a computer system with multiple LUNs. A flash device powers-on into a default LUN, from which the system boots, maintaining any other LUNs unavailable. The first LUN reconfigures the system to remove itself as the available LUN, to load a second LUN as the only available LUN, and to reboot the computer system into the newly available second LUN. The second LUN reconfigures the system to load any additional LUNs, such as removable storage on the flash drive. Upon reconfiguration, the system includes multiple LUNs. The second LUN includes an interpolated LUN driver, which exposes additional LUNs before operation of other device drivers. The interpolated LUN driver takes control during boot-up, exposing any available LUNs before the regular environment's operating system.

The present invention is a storage system. The storage system includes a disk array. The disk array includes a disk drive pair which includes a hard disk drive and a solid state disk drive, such as a NAND flash drive. The storage system also includes a disk array controller. The disk array controller may be communicatively coupled with a host server and with the disk array. Further, the disk array controller may be configured for reading from the disk array and writing to the disk array based upon read commands and write commands received from the host server. The disk array may be configured as a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) configuration, such as a Level 1 RAID configuration (RAID 1). Thus, the disk drive pair may be a RAID disk drive pair, such as a RAID 1 disk drive pair. Further, all the read commands may be directed exclusively to the solid state disk drive and the write commands may be directed to both the solid state disk drive and the hard disk drive.

There is provided a logical volume management method for storage system. When a logical volume is created on a flash memory drive, a management computer allocates logical volume while flash memory chip border of flash memory drive is taken into account. Specifically, a table for managing a correlation between each parity group and the flash memory chip of the flash memory drive is obtained and the logical volume is allocated in such a manner that a flash memory chip is not shared by a plurality of logical volumes. When complete erasing of logical volume data is performed, the management computer specifies a flash memory chip on which complete data erasing is to be performed, and the storage system completely erases data exclusively on the chip of interest with a use of a function of completely erasing data at a time by chip unit of the flash memory chip (chip erasing).

A method is used in managing data in a data storage system. A tiered storage pool is identified wherein the storage pool includes multiple tiers having multiple storage units. A wear indicator for each of the multiple storage units is monitored. A first storage unit having a wear indicator greater than a second storage unit is identified. High activity data on the first storage unit is also identified. The identified high activity data is migrated from the first storage unit to the second storage unit.

A system is provided for reading and writing sectors which may be realized as either a disk device to the local operating system, or as a virtual disk device to a virtual machine. A user's computing environment is stored in the network in the form of a disk image, which may be a virtual disk image, for example. The virtual disk is realized on host computers through host-resident virtual machine monitors such as MICROSOFT VIRTUAL PC®. Portable memory devices, such as flash devices, buffer virtual disk writes and cache reads, greatly reducing the performance degradation associated with remote disk access. The cache is mobile so that it can be travel with the user. The flash device remembers commonly used virtual disk content fingerprints so that the host machine's local disk can be used to satisfy many common disk reads when ubiquitous static content is involved. Standard, frequently used software images might be distributed in advance to host machines. Flash disk contents are trickled back into the networked parent disk image in order to provide an automatic backup facility, adding the benefit of ensuring that the flash drive doesn't overflow.

Briefly, an embodiment of the present invention includes a portable flash memory drive with a simplified mechanism, based upon the resilient properties of the material used to create the parts, for reliable extension and retraction of the device's interface plug. The portable flash memory drive is comprised of a metal housing (or case), a printed circuit board (PCB) assembly, PCB support, PCB assembly end cap, an upper, and lower housing, and in some embodiments a fingerprint sensor and / or key ring assembly. The press / push switch mechanism is located on either the side of the portable flash memory device, or the top; and relies upon the resilient properties of the material used to create the metal housing or end cap, to create a smooth, locking mechanism for the extension or retraction of the interface (i.e., USB or firewire) plug. The switching / locking mechanism relies upon grooves or notches within the material of the upper and / or lower housing for tracking and locking, coupled with protrusion tabs on the sliding components of the end cap or metal housing. Alternatively, in some embodiments of the present invention, a fingerprint sensor is also extended or retracted contemporaneously with the interface plug, and allows the end user to secure and unlock the data contained, in whole or in part, therein.

A memory card, flash memory drive or other removable re-programmable non-volatile memory device is configured so that at least part of the memory is not available for storage of user data until data of a message stored in the memory is at least read out by the user through a host device to which the memory device is connected. The message may be an advertisement, instructions on using the memory device, or the like, to which the user is at least exposed as a condition of having the full capacity of the memory card available thereafter for use by him or her.