Dual porting serial advanced technology attachment disk drives for fault tolerant applications

摘要

The present invention is directed to an apparatus capable of dual porting a serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) disk drive in a fault tolerant communication system, such as fibre channel. The dual porting apparatus includes two idle regenerators coupled to two serial master devices, a synchronization logic capable of synchronizing the communications between one of the idle regenerators and a third idle regenerator coupled to the SATA disk drive. Furthermore the dual porting apparatus may include an auto detector capable of enabling either of the first two idle regenerators, thus effectively switching between the two.