Importance

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Abstract

A method for adaptively formatting the multiple surfaces of data storage devices such as hard drives. The method ensures that all the drives have the same total data capacity and that the capacity in each data rate is the same from drive to drive. The method includes the step of dividing the data surfaces into warm and cold surfaces using a surface quality measurement. All cold surfaces are formatted with a predetermined cold format and all warm surfaces are formatted with a predetermined warm format. The cold and warm formats have different data capacities by means of different zone layouts, a different number of error correction code bytes per data block, or different track pitches. A second embodiment uses one of three different formats for each surface: cold, nominal, or hot. The cold and hot formats are designed to be mutually compensating in terms of data capacity and each drive has an equal number of cold and hot surfaces. Therefore, each drive has a total data capacity equal to a drive having only nominally formatted surfaces. Preferably, one surface is formatted cold, and one surface is formatted hot, with the rest formatted according to a nominal format. Also disclosed is a method of traversing the tracks of a drive formatted according to the invention. The traversal method uses cylinder access mode or zone access mode traversal for each group of like-formatted surfaces, thus minimizing seek times.

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First Claim