Patent ID: 7694096

Claim:
An apparatus to implement protected partitions in storage media, the apparatus comprising: a code storage device storing executable code; a processor executing the executable code, the executable code comprising a communication module receiving a Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) mode select command and mode page command from a host for a storage device having a plurality of Logical Unit Numbers (LUN) for a SCSI communication interface, wherein a first LUN is used for unprotected state data, a second LUN is used for auto-protected state data wherein only one write to a first logical block address in a partition in the storage device is allowed, a third LUN is used for a read-only auto-protected state data and prevents write, erase, and format commands to the first logical block address after the first logical block address is written to once, and wherein at least one logical block address in the partition is unwritten to, and a fourth LUN is used for Write Once Read Many (WORM) protected state data and prevents write, erase, and format commands to all logical block addresses in the partition; a parse module extracting logical block addresses from the mode page command; the control module receiving a write command directed to one of the first, second, third, or fourth LUN; the parse module determining a new protection status for the extracted logical block addresses from the write command LUN; a check module verifying the new protection status of the extracted logical block addresses of the storage device is an allowable transition between protection states; and a write module writing data to the extracted logical block addresses and performing protection state transitions for the extracted logical block addresses if the transition is allowable.