TIME BUDGETING FOR NON-DATA TRANSFER OPERATIONS IN DRIVE UNITS

摘要

Between data accesses to a storage medium, requested by an initiator, a logical unit may need to perform autonomous operations. The logical unit receives information from the initiator to allow the logical unit to estimate whether the stream buffer of the initiator is reaching a critical level. Based on this estimate, the logical unit can determine whether to perform or continue autonomous operations such as error recovery; physical maintenance of a drive mechanism or storage medium; or relative positioning between the drive mechanism and storage medium. The estimate also allows a flexible, rather than a fixed, time-out.