Patent ID: 6249887
Filing Date: 2001-06-19
Classification: G06F,G11B

Abstract:
A system for predicting failure of a disk drive comprising:a disk drive assembly including a spindle, a disk operatively associated with the spindle and a disk reading mechanism including a read head;means for providing said disk reading mechanism positioning patterns for reads of data that test reliability of specific functions of hard drive components;means for identifying performance sensitive reads in each of the positioning patterns, each performance sensitive read including one of a first read and a second read;means for generating a test string including a plurality of performance sensitive reads;means for determining a probability of occurrence of a given ratio of performance sensitive reads in the test string and for storing respective probabilities as calibration parameters for the test string;means for controlling said disk drive assembly to periodically apply the test string read to the disk;means for monitoring the application of the test string to identify a number of a first reads and a number of second reads performed during application of the test string and establishing a ratio of first read to second reads;means for comparing the established ratio to respective calibration parameters and for generating a comparison result; andmeans for predicting a possibility of disk failure as a function of the comparison result.