Patent ID: 8464106
Filing Date: 2013-06-11
Classification: G06F,G11C

Abstract:
1. A method for automatic backup of a first solid-state mass storage device of a host system by predetermining a failure of the first solid-state mass storage device, the first solid-state mass storage device comprising a controller and at least one nonvolatile memory device comprising pages that are organized into memory blocks, the method comprising: assigning at least a first memory block of the memory blocks as wear indicator means and excluding the wear indicator means from use as data storage for the nonvolatile memory device; using at least a first set of the memory blocks of the nonvolatile memory device as data blocks for data storage whereby data are written to and erased from each of the data blocks in program/erase (P/E) cycles; collecting information regarding the number of P/E cycles encountered by the data blocks and accessing the information to perform wear leveling on the data blocks; subjecting the wear indicator means to P/E cycles so that the wear indicator means is subjected to a number of P/E cycles that is greater than the number of P/E cycles encountered by the data blocks; performing integrity checks of the wear indicator means and monitoring a bit error rate thereof; and taking corrective action if the bit error rate of the wear indicator means reaches a predetermined threshold, the corrective action comprising connecting the first solid-state mass storage device to a second mass storage device of the host system, and then initiating a data backup procedure comprising copying data stored in the data blocks of the first solid-state mass storage device to the second mass storage device.