Patent ID: 9015355
Filing Date: 2015-04-21
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. An active serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) disk drive storage array backplane comprising: (a) printed circuit board (PCB) backplane; (b) plurality of pass-thru disk drive controllers (PTDDCs); (c) plurality of electrical interface connectors (EICs); wherein said plurality of PTDDCs is mounted on said PCB backplane; said plurality of EICs is mounted on said PCB backplane and configured to electrically couple to a corresponding plurality of host bus adapter (HBA) and power supply input (PSI) connectors associated with a corresponding plurality of SATA disk drives; said PTDDCs each comprise a pass-thru input (PTI) port, pass-thru output (PTO) port, and disk drive interface (DDI) port; said PTI ports, said PTO ports, and said DDI ports are configured as SATA interfaces; said PTDDCs are configured to electrically couple corresponding said DDI ports to said corresponding plurality of host bus adapter (HBA) connectors; said PTDDCs are configured to connect a plurality of PTDDCs on said PCB to form a serial daisy-chain by only interconnecting the PTO port of one PTDDC to the PTI port of another PTDDC in said daisy-chain; said PTDDC is configured to present a continuous logical block address space via said PTI port comprising disk drives directly connected to PTDDCs in said daisy-chain; said PTDDC is configured to receive disk drive data access command (DDDAC) input via said PTI port; said PTDDC is configured to translate said DDDAC and electrically transmit said translation to a SATA disk drive (SDD) in a form suitable for use by said SDD; said PTDDC determines when said DDDAC falls within the logical block address (LBA) range of said SDD, and when so, passes said DDDAC to said SDD after modifying said DDDAC to account for said LBA range mapped by said SDD; said PTDDC determines when said DDDAC falls within said LBA range of said SDD, and when not, said DDDAC is passed via said PTO port to the PTI port of any daisy-chained PTDDC attached to said PTDDC PTO port; and said PTDDC logically connects storage from said SDD with said PTI port to pass-thru data transfers requested by said DDDAC to or from said SDD and said PTI port.