Patent ID: 7747144

Claim:
A hard disk apparatus for accessing a disk type recording medium, comprising: recording means for recording data to said disk type recording medium; seek means for making a pickup seeking a desired track; access means for signal-processing a reproduced signal obtained through said pickup to reproduce data recorded in said disk type recording medium; a buffer memory for holding data to be stored in the disk type recording medium; another memory for holding, when said data are recorded to said disk type recording medium, said data allocated to a portion which must be accessed by seeking at the time of reproduction at least for a period of time from starting of said seeking to a time at which said disk type recording medium becomes reproducible, selecting means for selectively outputting the data to the buffer memory or the another memory; and control means for controlling operations of said recording means, said seek means, said access means, and said another memory, wherein the start address of the portion which is accessed during seeking is set to a start position where a continuity of cluster number is lost during recording continuous data, wherein the control means sequentially detects a free area and sets a cluster address of a start position of the detected free area as parameters for issuing a write command, wherein if seeking is performed upon a losing of the continuity between cluster numbers, the control means records the data corresponding to the start position immediately after the seeking, wherein a system entry area of the recording medium is divided into a FAT area where recorded data is managed by the hard disk apparatus and a directory area where recorded data is managed by an external apparatus, and wherein, under the control of said control means, said data held in said another memory are outputted at least for a period in which it is difficult to reproduce data from said disk type recording medium because of the seeking by said seek means, and whereupon starting the driving of the recording medium upon instruction for reproduction to prevent power dissipation, the data held in the another memory is used until the recording medium becomes accessible, thereby effectively preventing waste power dissipation and instantaneously outputting the data of the file.