Hard disk sector/track remapping for transparent wear leveling
View Patent ↗The present principles provide methods for storing the write counts for each track on the track or alternatively in NVRAM in the hard disk. Most hard disks already have a mechanism to remap a sector that becomes un-writable. This mechanism is used to remap entire tracks when a track write count becomes too high. A track with an excessively high write count can be mapped by the hard disk firmware to a track with a very low write count. By automatically remapping these tracks based on the number of write the wear can be more evenly distributed across the platter thus increasing the service life of the hard disk without modification to the application software.
1. A method for writing data to a storage device, comprising:
determining a first write count for a first track on a storage medium;
comparing the first write count of the first track to a predetermined track write count; and
writing data to a second track having a second write count lower than the predetermined track write count when the first write count is greater than the predetermined track write count.
2. The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps of:
writing the data to the first track when the first write count is less than the predetermined track write count.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first write count is stored on the first track.
4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first write count is stored in the storage device.
5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the storage device is a hard disk.
6. The method of claim 5 , the first write count is stored in a non-volatile random access memory NVRAM in the hard disk.
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein a plurality of write counts for a plurality of tracks are determined.
8. The method of claim 7 , wherein a first write count of one of the plurality of write counts is compared to the predetermined track write count; and
writing data to a second track of the plurality of tracks having a second write count lower than the predetermined write count when the first write count is greater than the predetermined write count.