Patent ID: 6707630
Filing Date: 2004-03-16
Classification: G11B

Abstract:
A method for managing the life of a storage medium in a storage device, which accesses a loaded storage medium for reading/writing data from/to said storage medium, comprising:reading medium life management information from said loaded storage medium; detecting an operating state of at least one of the reading and the writing of data on said storage medium, and updating said medium life management information in accordance with the results of such detection; writing said updated medium life management information to said storage medium upon unloading the storage medium, including detecting a plurality of states of at least one of the reading and the writing of data in said storage medium, with the plurality of states being read/write characteristics of said storage medium, and updating said medium life management information according to each of said plurality of states; analyzing each of said plurality of states of medium life management information; and determining the life of said storage medium based on the results of each analysis.