A data storage method, apparatus and system that increase drive capacity, minimize latency, reduce write access time and improve drive lifetime is described in this invention. In one embodiment, the data storage device described here is a composite hard disk drive comprises a number of recording media platters labeled from 1 to n, where n is greater than or equal to 2; wherein there exist two positive integer n1 and n2, where n1 and n2 are between 1 and n; n1 is not equals to n2; wherein the data tracks for the media platters n1 and n2 are written based on one of the following: 1) different RTs; 2) different WAs; or 3) different RTs and different WAs.

A data storage device includes a hard disk drive coupled to a printed circuit board (PCB), a volatile memory device coupled to the PCB, a non-volatile memory device coupled to the PCB, and a controller coupled to the PCB, such that the controller is in communication with the hard disk drive, the volatile memory device, and the non-volatile memory device. The controller is configured to identify patterns and/or structures of metadata for the hard disk drive, perform one or more of the following to the metadata to tailor the metadata: data shaping, content aware decoding, adaptive data trimming, and/or adaptive metablock sizing, and write the tailored metadata to the non-volatile memory device. The metadata is at least one of repeatable run out metadata, positioning error signal metadata, adjacent track interference metadata, and/or emergency power off metadata.

Disclosed are embodiments of systems and methods that allow for simplified creation of a calendar event. In embodiments, an entry may be provided via a simplified entry form. In embodiments, the present invention simplifies the creation of an event through natural language parsing. Embodiments may enable creation of an event for a calendaring application and/or within an application that is not primarily a calendaring application, such as, by way of example, an email application, an SMS/text messaging application, an instant messaging (IM) application, and a social networking application.

An information processing apparatus, for recording data in a magnetic storage medium by a shingled magnetic recording, and a method of controlling this, when a rewrite of data stored in the magnetic storage medium is instructed, copy data of a zone in which rewrite target data is stored other than the rewrite target data into a vacant zone of the magnetic storage medium; store, to the vacant zone into which the data is copied, the rewrite target data, delete by overwriting an entirety of the zone in which the rewrite target data is stored with predetermined data, and register the overwritten zone as an unused area.

A method of decoding a codeword that satisfies a k constraint into output data includes, using a decoder of a hard disk drive system, converting each bit of the codeword in Non-Return-to-Zero format, extracting, from the converted codeword, a plurality of data blocks comprising a first data block and a plurality of remaining data blocks, performing a first analysis on the plurality of data blocks for modifying each of the plurality of data blocks that satisfies a first predetermined criterion, and performing a second analysis on the plurality of data blocks after the first analysis for modifying each of the plurality of data blocks that satisfies a second predetermined criterion to obtain the output data.

Methods and apparatus associated with storing data in high or low energy zones are described. Example apparatus include a data storage system (DSS) that protects a message using an erasure code (EC). A location in the DSS may have an energy efficiency rating or a latency. Example apparatus include circuits that produce EC encoded data that has a likelihood of use, that select a location to store the EC encoded data in the DSS based on the energy efficiency rating, the latency, or the likelihood of use, that store the EC encoded data in the location, and that compute an order of retrieval for EC encoded data stored in the location. The order of retrieval may be based on the energy efficiency rating or the latency. The EC encoded data may also have a priority based on the number of erasures for which the EC corrects.

A storage device controller addresses consecutively-addressed portions of incoming data to consecutive data tracks on a storage medium and writes the consecutively-addressed portions to the consecutive data tracks in a non-consecutive track order. In one implementation, the storage device controller reads the data back from the consecutive data tracks in a consecutive address order in a single sequential read operation.

This application provides a hard disk format conversion method and apparatus, and a storage device, and belongs to the field of storage technologies. In this application, a storage format of a storage unit is converted from an SMR format to a PMR format. Because IOPS in the PMR format is higher than IOPS in the SMR format, IOPS in the storage unit can be increased after the storage format is converted. Alternatively, a storage format of a storage unit is converted from the PMR format to the SMR format. Because a storage capacity in the SMR format is higher than a storage capacity in the PMR format, a storage capacity of the storage unit can be increased after the storage format is converted.

A method for recording parity data of data stripes within shingled media recording bands in a redundant array of independent disks can be accomplished using a plurality of shingled media recording (SMR) hard disk drives (HDD) each with a plurality of shingled data bands. A data stream received from a host computer system is sequentially stored to a plurality of block segments in successive order, one stripe at a time successively. Each of the shingled data bands possess n data blocks (or multiple data blocks that are grouped together as a data unit) that are successively ordered, each corresponding successive data block from all of the SMR HDDs defines a data stripe, accordingly n data blocks in each SMR HDD defines n stripes across the shingled data bands. A transaction group sync triggers a halt to writing the data stream. The rest of the data stripe is written with fill bits. Parity data is written to a parity drive in one or more SMR parity blocks that correspond in size and sequence to the data blocks in the data stripes possessing the first data stream and any of the fill bits.

A system includes a read/write module and a caching module. The read/write module is configured to access a first portion of a recording surface of a rotating storage device. Data is stored on the first portion of the recording surface of the rotating storage device at a first density. The caching module is configured to cache data on a second portion of the recording surface of the rotating storage device at a second density. The second portion of the recording surface of the rotating storage device is separate from the first portion of the recording surface of the rotating storage device. The second density is less than the first density.