Patent ID: 8046523

Claim:
A flash memory management apparatus comprising: a map search module which searches for a map block, which comprises pages comprising storage paths of i-node blocks and a first flag indicating whether the storage paths of the i-node blocks have been updated, and is located at a position of a memory among blocks that form the memory, and extracts the storage paths of the i-node blocks from the map block if the storage paths of the i-node blocks are specified in the map block, based on the first flag; a path search module which searches for storage paths of data specified in the i-node blocks based on an extraction result of the map search module; and a data management module which accesses the data through a storage path of the data and performs a transaction on the data, wherein each i-node block comprises a page comprising storage paths of pieces of the data and, if the storage paths of the i-node blocks are not specified in the map block, based on the first flag, the path search module extracts the pages included in the i-node blocks and searches for a storage path of the data included in a data region of the extracted pages, and wherein one of a direct reference i-node and an indirect reference i-node is assigned for the data according to file sizes of the data.