Inventors:
Michael James - Longmont CO, US
Assignee:
Fujitsu Limited - Kawasaki
International Classification:
G11B 20/18
Abstract:
Data requested from a disk drive by a host is read continuously from sectors in tracks on a rotating disk and is temporarily stored in buffer memory within the disk drive. Before releasing the sectors for host access, each sector is checked for errors, and if errors are identified, error correction is attempted in a correction engine, using a selected error correction facility. If the errors are not corrected using the first selected correction facility, the bad sector is held in the buffer memory until the correction engine is idle. The correction engine is idle, for example, when good sectors (which have no errors) are read and are immediately released for host access. This idle time in the correction engine is used to attempt error correction using one or more different correction facilities. If the errors are corrected using the correction engine's idle time, it is not necessary to re-read the sector.