Modular mass storage system and method therefor
View Patent ↗A modular mass storage system and method that enables cableless mounting of ATA and/or similar high speed interface-based mass storage devices in a computer system. The system includes a printed circuit board, a system expansion slot interface on the printed circuit board and comprising power and data pins, a host bus controller on the printed circuit board and electrically connected to the system expansion slot interface, docking connectors connected with the host bus controller to receive power and exchange data therewith and adapted to electrically couple with industry-standard non-volatile memory devices without cabling therebetween, and features on the printed circuit board for securing the memory devices thereto once coupled to the docking connectors.
1. A method of installing a mass storage system on a computer system, method comprising:
providing a mass storage system comprising a printed circuit board, a system expansion slot interface on the printed circuit board and comprising power and data pins, a host bus controller on the printed circuit board and electrically connected to the system expansion slot interface, docking connectors connected with the host bus controller to receive power and exchange data therewith and adapted to electrically couple with industry-standard non-volatile memory devices without cabling therebetween; and
installing at least one industry-standard non-volatile memory device in the mass storage system by removably coupling the memory device to one of the docking connectors and removably securing the memory device to the printed circuit board.
2. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising installing the mass storage system on a motherboard of a computer prior to installing the memory device on the mass storage system.
3. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising removing the memory device from the mass storage system by uncoupling the memory device from its corresponding docking connector.
4. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the system expansion slot interface is a PCIe connector.
5. The method according to claim 4 , wherein the power and data pins conform to female SATA connectors, eSATA connectors, USB connectors, HDMI connectors, IEEE 1394 interface connectors or SO-DIMM sockets.
6. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the host bus controller is configured as a RAID controller.
7. The method according to claim 6 , wherein the host bus controller comprises onboard SDRAM, SRAM or pipeline burst SRAM used as data cache.
8. The method according to claim 6 , wherein the host bus controller comprises onboard logic capable of carrying out parity calculations for the RAID controller.
9. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the memory device is one of a plurality of memory devices installed in the mass storage system by removably coupling the memory devices to a plurality of the docking connectors and removably securing the memory devices to the printed circuit board.
10. The method according to claim 9 , wherein the memory devices comprise at least two drives chosen from the group consisting of solid state drives, hard disk drives, USB 3.0 flash drives, SO-DIMMs, HDMI drives, and IEEE 1394 interface drives.
11. The method according to claim 9 , wherein the memory devices comprise at least one USB 3.0 flash drive.
12. The method according to claim 9 , wherein the memory devices comprise at least one SO-DIMM.