Patent ID: 7975105

Claim:
A flash-based storage device comprising: an enclosure including a plurality of openings; a main board, housed in the enclosure, including at least a host interface, a buffer, a data management module and a plurality of card interfaces; a number of mechanisms respectively coupled to the card interfaces, each of the mechanisms directing towards one of the openings, each of flash memory cards being inserted into one of the mechanisms through one of the openings and coupled to one of the card interfaces, wherein the each of the flash memory cards independently works with a device that provides a slot to receive the each of the flash memory cards for data exchange, wherein the data management module is configured to manage how to store data on the flash memory cards when there are at least two of the flash memory cards inserted respectively in the mechanisms, and indicates so when one of the at least two of the flash memory cards holds some of the data but becomes no longer available, and wherein the host interface facilitates data exchange between the flash-based storage device and a host device, the buffer is provided to buffer data being exchanged between the host device and the flash-based storage device, data received from the host device is first buffered in the buffer before the buffered data is distributed among the inserted flash memory cards; and wherein a storage capacity of the flash-based storage device is upgraded when one of the flash memory cards is replaced.