James J Touchton, 771969 Hardscrabble Pl, Boulder, CO 80305

7747907, Jun 29, 2010

Sep 20, 2005

11/230718

Edwin Scott Olds - Fort Collins CO, US
Jonathan Williams Haines - Boulder CO, US
Dan Joseph Coonen - Longmont CO, US
Timothy Richard Feldman - Louisville CO, US
Bruce Douglas Emo - Longmont CO, US
James Joseph Touchton - Boulder CO, US

Seagate Technology LLC - Scotts Valley CA

G06F 11/00

714 54, 714 42

A predictive failure control circuit and associated method are provided in a data storing and retrieving apparatus. The circuit is configured to schedule a data integrity operation on data associated with a subportion of a data storage space, in relation to a comparison of an accumulated plurality of executed host access commands associated with the subportion. The subportion can comprise a sector or a single track or a band of tracks. A table preferably stores accumulated number of host access commands for each of a plurality of subportions of the data storage space. The data integrity operation can comprise reading the data on to detect degradation and restoring the recovered data to the same or to new, different tracks. The data subportions can also be reallocated to a new location.

8448045, May 21, 2013

May 26, 2011

13/116882

Prafulla Bollampalli Reddy - Longmont CO, US
Peter Igorevich Vasiliev - Longmont CO, US
Hui Su - Longmont CO, US
Timothy Richard Feldman - Louisville CO, US
Mary Elizabeth Dunn - Denver CO, US
James Joseph Touchton - Boulder CO, US
Bernardo Rub - Sudbury MA, US

Seagate Technology LLC - Cupertino CA

G11C 29/00

714764, 714805

Values are grouped into a first set of groupings of values. Based on inner codes, the number of groupings in the first set of groupings that have at least one erroneous value is determined. If the number of groupings in the first set of groupings that have an erroneous value is fewer than a maximum number of groupings that can be corrected by outer codes, a seek operation is begun. During the seek operation, the outer codes are used to detect and correct the erroneous values that were produced during the reading of values. In other aspects, a parity section for a data section of a data storage device is dirtied before writing any data to the data section such that if writing to the data section is interrupted, the parity section will indicate that it should not be used to correct data read from the data section.

2011008, Apr 7, 2011

Oct 1, 2009

12/571959

Mark Anthony Gubbins - Kiltoy, IE
Robert William Lamberton - Limavady, IE
Robert Edward Weinstein - Berthoud CO, US
James Joseph Touchton - Boulder CO, US

SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY, LLC - Scotts Valley CA

G11B 21/02
G11B 5/127

360 75, 360110, G9B 504, G9B 21003

The presently disclosed technology teaches integrating disc drive electronics into a transducer head. Decreased electrical transit times and data processing times can be achieved by placing the electronics on or within the transducer head because electrical connections may be made physically shorter than in conventional systems. The electronics may include one or more of a control system circuit, a write driver, and/or a data buffer. The control system circuit generates a modified clock signal that has a fixed relation to phase and frequency of a bit-detected reference signal that corresponds to positions of patterned bits on the disc. The write driver writes outgoing data bits received from an external connection to off-head electronics directly to the writer synchronized with the modified clock signal. The data buffer stores and converts digital data bits sent from the off-head electronics to an analog signal that is synchronized with the modified clock signal.

2013023, Sep 12, 2013

Mar 12, 2012

13/418189

Timothy Richard Feldman - Louisville CO, US
Jonathan Williams Haines - Boulder CO, US
James Joseph Touchton - Boulder CO, US

SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY LLC - Cupertino CA

G06F 12/00

711103, 711154, 711112, 711E12008

A method or system comprising iteratively updating a value of an operating parameter of a storage region of a storage device based on dynamic characterization of the storage region during operation of the storage device and using the updated value of the operating parameter during access to the storage region.

4202019, May 6, 1980

Feb 24, 1978

5/880906

Paul M. Popoff - Sunnyvale CA
Siu K. Lee - Sunnyvale CA
James J. Touchton - Boulder CO

Sperry Rand Corporation - New York NY

G11B 509

360 51

A timing circuit for a track following servo system wherein an odd servo track having a series of prerecorded odd dibits thereon and an adjacent even servo track having a series of even dibits prerecorded thereon are moved with respect to a servo head to induce in the servo head signals that vary with the occurrence of the dibits and have an amplitude representative of the lateral position of the servo head with respect to the servo tracks. The servo head and its associated preamplifier produce a first signal having portions from both odd and even servo tracks and a second signal that is the inverse of the first signal. The first and second signals are processed by parallel identical circuit paths to generate a clocking signal that times the remainder of the data storage system in synchronism with the spacing of dibits on the servo tracks. Each of the parallel identical circuit paths includes a circuit for discriminating between true dibits and spurious noise signals on the servo tracks, a counter circuit for passing only those dibit pulses that occur within a given time interval after the next preceding dibit, and a circuit for producing a timing pulse at a specified time after the preceding pulse to maintain system synchronization even in the absence of a dibit on one of the tracks.

5774299, Jun 30, 1998

Aug 13, 1996

8/696120

Michael E. Baum - Longmont CO
James J. Touchton - Boulder CO
Keith W. Malang - Longmont CO

Seagate Technology, Inc. - Scotts Valley CA

G11B 5596

360 7708

The track follow gain control of an actuator controller is calibrated by injecting a sinusoidal signal into the position error signal during a servo burst interrupt. The injected signal is bandpass filtered to optimize the coherence of the measurement. A sine error signal is derived based on the filtered (sine actual) signal and a sine desired signal. The sine error signal is applied to the track follow gain control to adjust the amplitude of the control signal to the actuator based on the sine error signal. The sine error is derived by averaging the peaks of the filtered injected signal and subtracting the averaged signal from the desired signal which represents the expected error of the sinusoidal signal under ideal conditions. The recording surfaces may be segmented into a plurality of radial zones in which case a central track is identified in one zone on a selected disc surface. The sine error signal is derived for that zone, after which the process is repeated for the corresponding zone of each other recording surface.

5600506, Feb 4, 1997

May 10, 1995

8/435435

Michael Baum - Longmont CO
James Touchton - Boulder CO

Conner Peripherals, Inc. - San Jose CA

G11B 5596

360 7814

A method and system for generating a position signal indicative of the position of a transducer with reference to a fixed reference point on the surface of a disk within a disk drive system. The system is comprised of two major elements. The first element is a disk divided into sectors and has Z data tracks where each sector includes a preamble area that includes a servo band comprised of 0. 75*Z consecutive overlapping quadrature servo patterns and gray scale band comprised of 1. 5*Z consecutively addressed gray scale areas that have been recorded across all data tracks. The second element is a position generator that generates the position signal from the relative magnitude of each of the four servo bursts of a quadrature servo pattern of the servo band and the gray scale address of the gray scale area of the gray scale band that is read by a transducer when the transducer reads the preamble of a sector.

4326226, Apr 20, 1982

May 8, 1980

6/147724

James J. Touchton - Boulder CO
Richard J. Pederson - Louisville CO

Storage Technology Corporation - Louisville CO

G11B 2110
G11B 502

360 77

An improved automatic gain control circuit suitable for use in the servo loop controlling the position of magnetic read/write heads with respect to magnetic disk data storage media is disclosed. The AGC circuit features a fast loop and a slow loop each of which loops contain gain varying elements, which in the preferred embodiment comprise field effect transistors. By using a reference voltage to control the operating point of the variable gain element in the fast loop, the effects of mechanical resonances on the servo data can be substantially eliminated while the overall AGC system response exhibits a substantially constant bandwidth.