Patent ID: 7555377

Claim:
A method for collecting data from a motor-driven vehicle including a microprocessor with memory having a capacity for storing a particular quantity of data, said method comprising: ascertaining that prescribed conditions are fulfilled for recording data of interest; collecting data from a plurality of sensors connected to the vehicle or motor of the vehicle when the prescribed conditions are fulfilled; recording prescribed data sets of collected data in the memory as data files, at least one of the data files being stored as a non-erasable reference data file and a plurality of data files recorded thereafter being stored as erasable data files; and analyzing one of said plurality of erasable data files by comparison to said stored, non-erasable reference data file and thereafter recording over said analyzed erasable data file with a new data file to be compared with said reference data file and thereby enabling the utilization of a microprocessor having memory capacity for storing a plurality of historical data files, as well as analyze data in quantities greater than said memory capacity.