Patent ID: 7899982

Claim:
A semiconductor memory module for use in communicating with an external apparatus, said semiconductor memory module comprising; a secure processing unit operable to perform a mutual authentication with the external apparatus; a memory area having a data structure including: a plurality of sectors wherein one or more sectors are managed as a cluster, one or more clusters are managed as a file, some consecutive sectors in the memory area form a block and a block is a smallest unit on which data erasure can be performed; a user data area that can be accessed by the external apparatus regardless of whether or not authenticity of the external apparatus has been verified through the mutual authentication; a protected area that can only be accessed by the external apparatus once authenticity of the external apparatus has been verified; wherein at least one of the user data area and the protected area includes: a first area comprising: a first block including a first sector having a master boot record and a partition table recorded therein; partition boot sector information, a file allocation table, and a predetermined number of reserved sectors which are used for padding the first area recorded therein such that a size of the first area in an integral multiple of the block size; a second area comprising a block including a root directory entry; and a third area.