Patent ID: RE43211

Claim:
An apparatus comprising circuitry that can execute program instructions; and a memory, in functional communication with said circuitry, storing at least a first group of program instructions that, when executed in said circuitry, provides a first power saving operation that causes a hard disk drive connected with said apparatus to operate with a lower power consumption during normal operation, averaged over a time period, than a standard power consumption that would occur in the absence of executing said first group of program instructions, wherein execution of said first group of program instructions results in delaying a write operation to a target location that is relatively distant from a current disk location; execution of said first group of program instructions results in reordering commands to an order different from an original order in which said commands would be performed in absence of executing said first group of program instructions; execution of said first group of program instructions results in retaining write data in a cache for a period longer than an original period for which said write data would be retained in absence of executing said first group of program instructions; or execution of said first group of program instructions results in sending commands from said apparatus to said hard disk drive which can only be performed on a predefined class of disk drives.