System and method for enhancing external storage

Abstract

One embodiment as described herein provides a system and method for enhancing external storage. One embodiment includes a controller of a peripheral device of a computer system. The controller provides access a storage medium of the peripheral device. In one embodiment, the storage medium of the peripheral device includes a section of storage reserved for firmware of the peripheral device.

Description

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates a typical external storage configuration;

FIG. 2 illustrates an external storage configuration in accordance with one embodiment;

FIG. 3 illustrates a typical arrangement of a Master and a Slave storage configuration; and

FIG. 4 illustrates an external storage configuration in accordance with one embodiment.

FIG. 5 illustrates a flow diagram describing a process according to one embodiment.

Claims

1) Apparatus comprising: A controller of a peripheral device of a computer system, the controller to access a storage medium of the peripheral device, the storage medium of the peripheral device to include a section of storage reserved for firmware of the peripheral device.

2) The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the controller is exclusive of a non-volatile storage to store the device firmware.

3) The apparatus of claim 2, the device firmware to include at least one or more of a serial number of the device, an identity of a manufacturer of the device, and a model identity of the device.

4) The apparatus of claim 3, the peripheral device is an external storage solution.

5) The apparatus of claim 3, the peripheral device is an external storage device comprising one of a Universal Serial Bus (USB) disk drive, a Firewire disk drive, and a IDE disk drive.

6) The apparatus of claim 3, wherein the peripheral device has a host interface comprising at least one of USB interface, a serial ATA interface, a Firewire (IEEE 1394 interface), a USB on-the-go (OTG) attached to an ATA disk drive.

7) The apparatus of claim 5, wherein the controller to scan a primary storage medium for the device for firmware and to load the firmware into a memory of the system.

8) An apparatus comprising: A controller to access a peripheral device, the controller exclusive of firmware, the controller to access a section of a storage medium of the peripheral device reserved to emulate firmware of the controller.

9) Apparatus comprising: A controller of a peripheral storage device of a computer system, the controller to identify a presence of multiple hard disk drives (HDDs) and provide logical access to the multiple HDDs as a single HDD having a storage capacity greater than a storage capacity of any one of the multiple HDDs.

10) The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the controller is to provide logical access to the multiple HDDs as a single HDD having a storage capacity equal to a sum of the storage capacity of the multiple HDDs.

11) The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the controller, in response to an initiation, determines if one of a jumper and an indicator are set to indicate the multiple HDDs are to be accessed as a logical single HDD.

12) The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the controller is to determine a storage capacity of the separate HDDs of the multiple HDDs.

13) The apparatus of claim 10, in response to receiving an access request having an logical address greater than a quantity of addresses for a first HDD of the multiple HDDs, the controller to an address on a second HDD corresponding to the logical address by offsetting the logical address by the quantity of addresses for the first HDD.