Patent ID: 8321641

Claim:
A data access device for making an access to a recording medium having a real data area built from a plurality of clusters and a management table built from a plurality of entries showing usage conditions of corresponding clusters, in order to write data into the recording medium, the device comprising: a control unit; main memory to which the control unit is configured to make a direct access; and a medium controller which is capable of making an access to the recording medium and which is driven and controlled by the control unit, wherein the control unit divides the management table into blocks of a predetermined size before writing data into the recording medium, wherein the predetermined size is equal to or less than a data size that can be read in one access to the recording medium, and creates a search table in main memory, wherein the search table represents, for each of the blocks in the form of one byte or less, whether or not there are any unassigned entries in the block corresponding to unassigned clusters in the real data area without indicating how many unassigned entries exist in the block; and the control unit further locates a position of a block where any unassigned entries are present with reference to the search table when writing data into the recording medium, thereafter reads data in the located block, among the data of the management table stored in the recording medium, into the main memory by driving the medium controller, locates positions of unassigned clusters on the basis of the read data, and writes data to be written into the located unassigned clusters by driving the medium controller.