Method and device for duplicating an initial program of a hard disk drive

A device for copying programs installed on an original hard disk drive into duplicating hard disk drives is disclosed. The storage area of an original HDD is divided into a plurality of sub-storage areas corresponding to different HDD models so as to store initial programs corresponding to the different HDD models in respective sub-storage areas. Thereby, the above original initial programs corresponding to the different HDD models are copied into respective duplicating HDDs.

CLAIM OF PRIORITY 
This application makes reference to, incorporates the same herein, and 
claims all benefits accruing under 35 U.S.C. .sctn. 119 from an 
application for METHOD AND DEVICE FOR DUPLICATING INITIAL PROGRAM OF THE 
HARD DISK DRIVE earlier filed in the Korean Industrial Property Office on 
the 22.sup.nd of January 1997 and there duly assigned Serial No. 
1754/1997. 
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
1. Technical Field 
The present invention relates to a hard disk drive, and more particularly 
to a method and device for copying programs installed on the original hard 
disk drive into uninitialized hard disk drives. 
2. Related Art 
Generally, the hard disk drive (HDD) consists of a head/disk assembly (HDA) 
comprising mechanical constituent elements and a printed circuit board 
(PCB) comprising circuit elements, whereby a large amount of data can be 
magnetically stored on the disks and accessed at a great speed. Thus, such 
an arrangement is widely used as an auxiliary storage device for a 
computer system. 
When duplicating the original HDD having a large number of installed 
programs, it takes a lot of time and manpower because disks must be 
installed after being formatted. Therefore, a method is employed, whereby 
the original HDD is copied into duplicating HDDs from sector to sector 
without performing the process of disk formatting and the initial program 
installation, but such a conventional method is possible only when the 
model of the duplicating HDDs is the same as that of the original HDD. 
However, since the original and duplicating HDDs must be always of the same 
model and capacity when using the method referred to above and described 
in more detail below, there is a drawback in that the quantity of 
different original HDDs are required to be equal to the different models 
and capacities of the duplicating HDDs to be copied. This results in 
considerable expense. 
Moreover, a further drawback resides in the fact that productivity 
deteriorates in implementation of the method referred to above because, 
when the models and capacities of the original and duplicating HDDs turn 
out to be different after mounting the duplicating HDD, the original HDD 
must be replaced with another one appropriate to the model and capacity of 
the duplicating HDD. This results in loss of time as well as further 
expense. 
Therefore, there is a need in the prior art for development of an original 
HDD having a storage area divided into subareas which are equal in number 
to the number of different models of HDDs. There is also a need in the 
prior art for development of a method for dividing the storage area of an 
original HDD into sub-storage areas equal in number to the number of 
different models of HDDs so as to store the initial program of each of the 
sub-storage areas. Moreover, such a method should result in copying of the 
initial program from the sub-storage area into the appropriate duplicating 
HDDs when mounting a plurality of duplicating HDDs of different models. 
The following patents are considered to be representative of the prior art 
relative to the present invention, and are burdened by the disadvantages 
discussed above, as well as additional disadvantages discussed herein: 
U.S. Pat. No. 5,652,863 for a Graphical Method Of Media Partitioning On A 
Hard Disk to Asensio et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,530,602 for a Disk Drive 
micromotion Starting Apparatus And Method to Boutaghou et al., U.S. Pat. 
No. 5,465,343 for a Shared memory Array For Data Block And Control Program 
Storage In Disk Drive to Henson et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,430,845 for a 
Peripheral Device Interface For Dynamically Selecting Boot Disk Device 
Driver to Rimmer et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,980,783 for an Apparatus For 
Automatically Applying Servo Track Data To A Selected Servo Surface Of A 
Hard Disk Within A Hard Disk Assembly to Moir et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 
4,736,341 for an Intelligent Hard Disk Drive Subsystem to Redmond et al. 
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an 
original HDD, the storage area of which is divided into subareas equal in 
number to the number of different models of HDDs, whereby each sub-storage 
area stores the initializing program. 
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for 
dividing the storage area of an original HDD into sub-storage areas equal 
in number to the number of different models of HDDs so as to store the 
initial program in each of the sub-storage areas and copy the initial 
programs from the sub-storage areas, each corresponding to the respective 
HDD models, into the appropriate duplicating HDDs when mounting a 
plurality of duplicating HDDs of different models. 
The inventive device for copying the initialization program from an 
original HDD into the duplicating HDDs of different models is 
characterized in that the data storage area of the above single original 
HDD is divided into a plurality of sub-storage areas equal in number to 
the number of HDD models, each subarea storing an initialization program 
corresponding to the respective HDD models, so that the appropriate 
initialization program corresponding to the same HDD model can be copied 
into the respective duplicating HDDs. 
The present invention will now be described more specifically with 
reference to the preferred embodiment and the drawings attached only by 
way of example.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT 
To explain a method for copying the initializing program of HDDs in detail, 
FIG. 1 illustrates the control procedure for duplicating the HDD 
initialization. In step 100, the original HDD of the same model as the 
duplicating HDDs is mounted on the host computer. Then, in step 110, the 
duplicating HDDs are mounted on the host computer. Thereafter, in steps 
120 and 130, the host computer checks whether the models and capacities of 
the duplicating HDDs are the same as those of the host computer. If both 
of the original and duplicating HDDs are different in model and capacity, 
the host computer repeats step 110 by substituting another duplicating 
HDD. However, when the models and capacities of the HDDs are the same, the 
host computer proceeds to step 140 to copy the contents of the original 
HDD into the duplicating HDD. Then, the host computer proceeds to step 150 
to detect the continuation command for further production. If the 
continuation command is detected, the operation is terminated. If the 
continuation command is detected, the host computer proceeds to step 160 
to check the HDD model change command from the user. If a model change 
command is detected, the process returns to step 100 to repeat the 
subsequent steps; if the HDD model change command is not detected, the 
host computer returns to step 110 to repeat the subsequent steps. 
However, since the original and duplicating HDDs must be always of the same 
model and capacity when applying the above duplicating method, the method 
has a drawback in that as many different original HDDs are required as 
there are different models and capacities of duplicating HDDs to be 
copied, and this results in considerable expense. 
Another drawback is that productivity deteriorates because, when the models 
and capacities of the original and duplicating HDDs turn out to be 
different after mounting the duplicating HDD, the original HDD must be 
replaced with another one appropriate to the model and capacity of the 
duplicating HDD. 
Referring to FIG. 2, the disks 210 are rotated by the spindle motor 234. 
The magnetic heads 212 are each positioned over the corresponding disk 
surfaces, respectively, each being mounted on a corresponding support arm 
extending toward the disks 210 and perpendicularly from the E-block 
assembly 214 connected to the rotary voice coil actuator 230. 
When reading, the preamplifier 216 amplifies the read signals picked up by 
one of the heads 212 and applies the resulting analog read signal to the 
read/write channel circuit 218. When writing data, the preamplifier 216 
activates a corresponding one of the heads 212 to write the encoded write 
data applied by/from the read/write channel circuit 218 onto the 
corresponding disk 210. 
The read/write channel circuit 218 detects and decodes data pulses from the 
read signal applied by/from the preamplifier 216, applies the resulting 
signal to the disk data controller (DDC) 220, and decodes the write data 
applied by/from the DDC 220 for further application to the preamplifier 
216. 
The DDC 220 writes the data received from the host computer onto the disks 
210 through the read/write channel circuit 218 and the preamplifier 216, 
and interfaces communications between the host computer and the 
microcontroller 224. 
The buffer random access memory (RAM) 222 temporarily stores data 
transferred between the host computer, the micro controller 224, and the 
read/write channel circuit 218. The microcontroller 224 controls the DDC 
220 in response to read/write instructions received from the host 
computer, and further controls the track seeking and following operations. 
The programmable read-only memory (PROM) 226 stores the executive program 
of the microcontroller 224 and various setup values. The VCM driver 228 
generates the drive current for driving the actuator 230 in response to a 
control signal generated by the microcontroller 224 so as to control the 
positions of the heads 212, and further applies drive current to the voice 
coil of the actuator 230. The actuator 230 moves the heads 212 over the 
disks 210 in response to the level and direction of the drive current. 
The spindle motor driver 232 drives the spindle motor 234 so as to rotate 
the disks 210 under the control of the microcontroller 224. The disk 
signal controller 236 generates various timing signals required for 
read/write operations under the control of the microcontroller 224, and 
decodes the servo data for further application to the microcontroller 224. 
Referring to FIG. 3 illustrating the constituent elements of the general 
host computer, the microprocessor 300 performs overall control operations 
within the host computer. The ROM 306 and the RAM 308 constitute the 
memory units which store the executive program and various information for 
implementing the present invention. The direct memory access (DMA) 
controller 302 enables the transfer of data between the above memory unit 
and the I/O controller 304 of the input/output device without processor 
intervention. The system control bus 312 is a control channel through 
which the control signals and data signals are carried between the 
microprocessor 300 and the related peripheral devices. 
Accordingly, when copying the initial programs into the uninstalled 
duplicating HDDs by using the above original HDD, the host computer shown 
in FIG. 3 controls the microcontroller 224 shown in FIG. 2 so as to 
perform the copying operation, thereby storing the necessary executive 
program and various information in the main memory within the host 
computer. 
Under the above arrangement, the HDD shown in FIG. 2 is an original HDD 
having initial programs to be copied, and the magnetic storage area 
thereof is configured as depicted in FIG. 4. Thus, the above storage area 
is divided into a plurality of sub-storage areas equal in number to the 
number of models of the duplicating HDDs, each area storing respective 
program corresponding to a specific model. When performing copying 
operations by connecting a plurality of duplicating HDDs, the initial 
programs stored in the sub-storage areas are each copied into the 
respective duplicating HDDs corresponding to the HDD models. 
To describe in detail an embodiment of the present invention with reference 
to FIGS. 2-5, the duplicating HDDs are first connected with the original 
HDD having a magnetic recording medium formatted as shown in FIG. 4 
through the instrumentality of the host computer. Thereafter, the host 
computer initiates a copy mode for duplicating the uninstalled HDDs in 
step 510 (FIG. 5). Then, in step 520, the host computer detects the model 
type and capacity of the duplicating HDDs. In steps 530 and 540, the host 
computer reads data from the sub-storage areas corresponding to the 
respective models and capacities of the duplicating HDDs, and copies the 
retrieved data into the magnetic disk of the duplicating HDDs. In step 
550, upon failing to detect the continuous production command, the host 
computer terminates the copy operation; however, when the continuous 
production command is detected, the host computer proceeds to step 510 and 
the subsequent steps. 
As described above, the present invention provides an original HDD in which 
the storage area of the HDD is divided into a plurality of sub-storage 
areas equal in number to the number of HDD models so as to store the 
original initial programs corresponding to the specific HDD models in each 
of the respective sub-storage area. The invention also provides a method 
for copying the original initial programs corresponding to the specific 
HDD models into the respective duplicating HDDs, which can consequently 
reduce production cost and improve the productivity.