RAID Redundancy Building Skipping Invalid Data Areas
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional RAID data storage systems take a long time to build redundancy data, as they typically process all data areas, including invalid ones, which are not necessary for protection against hard drive failure, leading to inefficiency.
Innovation Solution
A system and method that identifies invalid data areas on a source storage medium and generates identification information for these areas, allowing a RAID controller to skip building redundancy data for them, thereby focusing on valid data areas to enhance efficiency.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If redundancy data is built for all data areas on the source storage medium, then complete data protection is achieved, but the time and resources required are excessive due to processing invalid data areas
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts and identifies invalid data areas from the source storage medium using a utility module before the RAID controller builds redundancy data. By separating valid and invalid data areas, the system only processes necessary valid regions, eliminating waste of time and resources on invalid areas while maintaining complete protection for all actual data.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary identification and categorization of data areas as valid or invalid before the redundancy data building process begins. This preliminary action allows the RAID controller to skip invalid areas during redundancy construction, significantly reducing processing time while ensuring all valid data receives appropriate protection.
2Reliability
If redundancy data is built for all data areas on the source storage medium, then complete data protection is achieved, but system resources are wasted processing invalid data areas
Solution Approach 1:
The utility module extracts identification information about invalid data areas and provides it to the RAID controller. This extraction mechanism allows the controller to selectively process only valid data areas, improving productivity by eliminating unnecessary processing operations while maintaining complete protection for all actual data through targeted redundancy construction.
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of performing excessive action by processing all data areas uniformly, the system applies partial action by processing only the necessary valid data areas. The utility module enables selective processing where the RAID controller builds redundancy data only for valid regions, optimizing resource utilization and building efficiency without compromising protection completeness.
3Device complexity
If the RAID controller processes all data areas without identification, then the process is simple, but time and resources are wasted on invalid areas
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a utility module as an intermediary between the data storage system and the RAID controller. This intermediary component performs the identification and categorization of valid and invalid data areas, providing structured information to the controller. While this adds a component, it maintains controller logic simplicity while dramatically reducing processing time through intelligent data area selection.
Data Source
AI summary
System and methods are provided for building redundancy data of a source storage medium using a redundant-array-of-independent-disks (RAID) array, the RAID array including one or more target storage mediums, the source storage medium including multiple data areas. One or more invalid data areas on the source storage medium are identified. Identification information of the one or more invalid data areas is generated. Redundancy data for data areas on the source storage medium other than the one or more invalid data areas is built using the RAID array.