JP2008310846A - Precheck device, method and program for hard disk drive failure of general-purpose server - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To perform prechek to prevent a failure of update work or the like caused by a defective sector when program updating or the like which is not a normal operation is carried out. <P>SOLUTION: A hard disk to be checked is divided by partition units, and a partition only for precheck is set. Inside of the set partition only for precheck is read to search for a defective sector. When the searching finds a defective sector, the defective sector is replaced with an alternative sector. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2009,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to checking a failure of a hard disk drive that occurs in a general-purpose server before performing an operation that is not a normal operation.

  When using a hard disk drive, there is RAID (Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks) as a means for redundancy of the hard disk drive. By using RAID, it is possible to recover when writing fails or data is damaged.

  However, RAID cannot be used when a space for mounting a device for realizing RAID cannot be secured.

In addition, as a related technique, means for finding a defective sector and repairing it using a defective sector replacement function of a hard disk drive has been disclosed (see, for example, Patent Document 1 and Patent Document 2).
JP 2006-190406 A JP 2006-092651 A

  In the techniques described in Patent Document 1 and Patent Document 2 described above, when replacing a defective sector, it is necessary to confirm the position of the defective sector so that other data is not affected. Furthermore, in order to substitute, it is necessary to write dummy data.

  The process of identifying the defective sector position, the process of holding information on the defective sector position, and the writing of dummy data are often complicated as processing, and there is a problem that extra man-hours are generated. .

  Furthermore, it has not been a mechanism that can confirm in advance a write failure due to the occurrence of a defective sector in an area that has not been used so far.

  In addition, as described above, it is possible to recover when writing fails by using RAID. However, when it is not possible to secure the space to install the RAID device, special creation is necessary to incorporate the RAID function. There is a problem that it cannot be used easily.

  Therefore, the present invention provides a pre-check device, a method thereof, and a program for preventing a failure of an update operation due to the occurrence of a bad sector when performing a program update in a program update operation that is a processing operation that is not performed in normal operation. The purpose is to provide.

  According to the present invention, as a first device, a pre-check device that checks in advance a failure of a hard disk drive, the hard disk drive is divided in units of partitions, and a partition dedicated to the pre-check is set, partition dividing means, A pre-reading unit that reads in a partition dedicated to pre-checking set in the partitioning unit and searches for a bad sector; and when a bad sector is found in the pre-reading unit, the detected bad sector is replaced There is provided a pre-checking device characterized by comprising sector replacement means for replacing a sector.

  Further, as a second device, a pre-check device for checking in advance for a hard disk drive failure, reading the hard disk drive and determining the presence or absence of a bad sector, and the number of bad sectors that can be accepted in advance. When the number of defective sectors determined by the threshold setting unit and the defective sector determining unit exceeds the threshold set by the threshold setting unit, the detected defective sector is There is provided a pre-checking device characterized by comprising sector replacement means for replacing with a replacement sector.

  Further, as a first method, a pre-check method for checking a hard disk drive failure in advance, wherein the hard disk drive is divided in units of partitions and a partition dedicated to the pre-check is set, a partitioning step, and the partitioning step In the pre-reading step of reading in the partition dedicated for pre-checking set in step 1, searching for a bad sector, and when a bad sector is found in the pre-reading step, the detected bad sector is replaced with an alternative sector And a sector replacement step. A pre-check method is provided.

  Further, as a second method, a hard disk drive failure check in advance is a pre-check method in which a hard disk drive is read to determine the presence or absence of a bad sector, and the number of bad sectors that can be tolerated in advance. If the number of defective sectors determined in the threshold setting step and the defective sector determining step exceeds the threshold set in the threshold setting step, the detected defective sector is There is provided a pre-checking method characterized by comprising a sector replacement step of replacing a replacement sector.

  Furthermore, as a first program, a pre-check program for checking in advance a failure of a hard disk drive, which divides the hard disk drive into partitions and sets a partition dedicated to the pre-check, and the partitioning function In the pre-read function that reads in the partition dedicated to the pre-check set in step 1 and searches for a bad sector, and when the pre-read function finds a bad sector, the detected bad sector is replaced with an alternative sector. A pre-check program is provided that causes a computer to implement a sector replacement function.

  Furthermore, as a second program, a pre-check program for checking hard disk drive failures in advance, reading the hard disk drive and determining the presence or absence of bad sectors, and the number of bad sectors that can be tolerated in advance When the number of defective sectors determined by the threshold setting function and the defective sector determination function exceeds the threshold set by the threshold setting function, the detected defective sector is There is provided a pre-check program that causes a computer to implement a sector replacement function that replaces a replacement sector.

  According to the present invention, it is possible to prevent a failure of an update operation due to the occurrence of a bad sector when performing a program update in a program update operation that is a processing operation that is not performed in normal operation.

  Next, embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.

  Referring to FIG. 1, a general-purpose server that is an embodiment of the present invention includes a CPU 11, a chip set 12, a disk controller 13, and a disk 14. Note that the hard disk drive failure pre-check apparatus according to the present invention can be implemented by applying it to a general-purpose server.

  Further, the disk 14 is divided into partitions for each application.

  In this embodiment, a dedicated partition for updating the program is provided. This partition dedicated to update programs is not used for normal operation.

  In addition, the partition dedicated to the update program is in a state where data is not written during normal operation.

  The partition dedicated to the update program is used as an area dedicated to transfer and update work of the program to be updated.

  In this embodiment, a partition (n) is provided as a partition dedicated to the update program.

  Next, the operation of the embodiment of the present invention shown in FIG. 1 will be described with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

  First, before executing the program update, the entire area of the designated partition (n) is read. Then, the presence / absence of a defective sector in all storage areas of the partition (n) is confirmed (S21).

  Thereby, it is determined whether or not a read error has occurred. (S22).

  If no read error has occurred, no bad sector has occurred and no problem has occurred in partition (n), so the pre-check is terminated (S26).

  On the other hand, if it is determined in step S22 that a read error has occurred, the number of times that the read error has occurred is confirmed (S23).

  If a read error less than the number of times specified in advance has occurred, a physical format (low level format) for re-arranging the sectors of the designated partition is performed (S24). As a result, the defective sector replacement is performed using the defective sector replacement function of the disk.

  In addition, the allowable number of read errors specified in advance is set to an arbitrary number based on factors such as the reliability required for the server, the product life of the disk, the work efficiency required for the server, and the frequency with which the program is updated. Is possible.

  In addition, when replacing a defective sector, it is possible to employ a configuration in which dummy sector data is written to exhibit a defective sector replacement function.

  After replacing the defective sector, the entire area of the designated partition (n) is read again (S21). Then, it is determined whether or not a read error more than a predetermined number of times has occurred (S22).

  If it has not occurred, the pre-check is terminated (S26).

  On the other hand, if a read error has occurred and has occurred more than the specified number of times (S23), it is determined that a disk failure has occurred in the disk 14 (S25).

  As a result, it is possible to detect in advance whether or not a bad sector has occurred when the program is updated.

[Other embodiments of the invention]
It is conceivable that the server to which the embodiment of the present invention is applied is a server that is executed at regular intervals with program update. As an example of a change in this case, it is also possible to schedule advance confirmation work according to the interval at which the program update is performed.

  Thereby, it is possible to grasp in advance the timing for performing the advance check. Therefore, it is possible to perform a prior check in a time zone that does not affect the operation program processing.

  In view of the processing capability of the server, customization such as delaying the read cycle can be performed so that the processing of the operation program is not affected.

  The effects of the embodiment of the present invention described above are as follows.

  The first effect is that it is possible to prevent a failure of the update work due to the occurrence of a bad sector when performing a program update in a program update work or the like that is a processing work that is not performed in normal operation. .

  The second effect is that the partition for each application can be used to read bad sectors and perform recovery work when there are bad sectors. The work can be performed concisely without being aware of the area.

  Further, the processing itself can be quickly terminated by performing the recovery operation only on the corresponding partition. This has an effect that the physical format can be completed in a short time, which is a particularly time-consuming process.

  Furthermore, when the entire disk is physically formatted, the data on the entire disk is deleted, but in this embodiment, there is an effect that data other than the partition dedicated to the update program is not affected.

  A third effect is that the present embodiment can be applied to a general-purpose server having only one disk. As a result, this embodiment can be applied to a server that cannot secure a space for mounting a plurality of disks, or a server that must be specially modified in order to mount a plurality of disks. .

  The fourth effect is that it can be implemented without complicated processing by using a sector replacement function provided in advance in the disk.

  Note that the hard disk drive failure pre-check device in the general-purpose server can be realized by hardware, software, or a combination thereof.

It is a figure showing the basic composition of the example of the present invention. It is a figure showing operation | movement of the Example of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

11 CPU
12 Chipset 13 Disk controller 14 Disk

Claims (14)

A pre-checking device that checks hard disk drive failures in advance,
Partitioning means to divide the hard disk drive into partitions and set up a partition for pre-checking, and
A pre-reading means for reading in a partition dedicated to the pre-check set in the partitioning means and searching for a bad sector;
A sector replacement means for replacing the detected bad sector with a replacement sector when a bad sector is found in the pre-reading means;
A pre-checking device comprising: The prior check device according to claim 1,
It further comprises a threshold setting means for setting the number of allowable bad sectors in advance as a threshold,
The pre-checking apparatus, wherein the sector replacement means operates only when the number of defective sectors found by the pre-reading means exceeds the threshold set by the threshold setting means. A pre-checking device that checks hard disk drive failures in advance,
A bad sector determination means for reading a hard disk drive and determining the presence or absence of a bad sector;
A threshold setting means for setting the number of allowable bad sectors in advance as a threshold;
A sector replacement unit that replaces the detected defective sector with a replacement sector when the number of defective sectors determined by the defective sector determination unit exceeds the threshold set by the threshold setting unit;
A pre-checking device comprising: The pre-checking device according to claim 2 or 3,
A second defective sector discriminating unit that reads the hard disk again after discriminating the sector in the sector substituting unit and discriminates the presence or absence of a defective sector;
Means for determining that a disk failure has occurred in the hard disk when the number of defective sectors determined by the second defective sector determination means exceeds the threshold set by the threshold setting means;
A pre-checking device further comprising: A pre-checking device according to any one of claims 1 to 4,
The pre-check apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the replacement of the defective sector is performed by any one or a combination of physical format and dummy data writing. A pre-checking device according to any one of claims 1 to 5,
A program update interval grasping means for grasping an interval at which the program update is performed;
A schedule setting means for setting a schedule so that a pre-check can be performed before the program update is executed;
Means for operating all the means based on the set schedule;
A pre-checking device further comprising: A pre-check method for checking hard disk drive failures in advance,
Partitioning step to divide the hard disk drive into partitions and set up a partition for pre-check,
A pre-reading step of reading in a partition dedicated to the pre-check set in the partitioning step and searching for a bad sector;
A sector replacement step of replacing the detected bad sector with a replacement sector when a bad sector is found in the pre-reading step;
A pre-check method characterized by comprising: A pre-check method according to claim 7,
Further comprising a threshold setting step of setting the number of allowable bad sectors in advance as a threshold;
The pre-check method, wherein the sector replacement step is performed only when the number of defective sectors found in the pre-reading step exceeds the threshold set in the threshold setting step. A pre-check method for checking hard disk drive failures in advance,
A hard sector drive reading and a bad sector determination step for determining the presence or absence of a bad sector;
A threshold setting step in which the number of allowable bad sectors is set as a threshold in advance;
When the number of bad sectors determined in the bad sector determination step exceeds the threshold set in the threshold setting step, a sector replacement step of substituting the found bad sector with a replacement sector;
A pre-check method characterized by comprising: A pre-check method according to claim 8 or 9, wherein
After performing sector replacement in the sector replacement step, the hard disk is read again to determine the presence or absence of a defective sector; a second defective sector determination step;
Determining that a disk failure has occurred in the hard disk if the number of defective sectors determined in the second defective sector determination step exceeds the threshold set in the threshold setting step;
A pre-check method characterized by further comprising: A pre-check method according to any one of claims 7 to 10,
The pre-check method according to claim 1, wherein the replacement of the defective sector is performed by any one or a combination of physical format and dummy data writing. The pre-check method according to any one of claims 7 to 11,
A program update interval grasping step for grasping an interval at which the program update is performed;
A schedule setting step for setting a schedule so that a pre-check can be performed before a program update is executed;
Performing all the steps based on the set schedule;
A pre-check method characterized by further comprising: A pre-check program that checks hard disk drive failures in advance,
Partitioning function to divide the hard disk drive into partitions and set up a partition dedicated to pre-check,
A pre-read function for reading in a partition dedicated to the pre-check set in the partitioning function and searching for a bad sector;
A sector replacement function for replacing the detected bad sector with a replacement sector when a bad sector is found in the pre-read function;
A pre-check program characterized in that a computer is realized. A pre-check program that checks hard disk drive failures in advance,
Read the hard disk drive and determine the presence or absence of bad sectors;
A threshold setting function that sets the number of allowable bad sectors in advance as a threshold;
When the number of bad sectors determined by the bad sector determination function exceeds the threshold set by the threshold setting function, a sector replacement function that replaces the found bad sector with a replacement sector;
A pre-check program characterized in that a computer is realized.

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