Method of repairing non-volatile memory based storage device and method of operating electronic system including the storage device

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9728277-B2
Application number	US-201514813420-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 30, 2015
Priority date	Aug 5, 2014
Publication date	Aug 8, 2017
Grant date	Aug 8, 2017

Abstract

A method of repairing a storage device including a non-volatile memory includes powering on the storage device, performing a booting sequence, determining whether an error has occurred during the booting sequence or during a normal mode, writing a failure signature to a predetermined signature address in the non-volatile memory upon determining that the error has occurred, reporting a failure to a host upon writing the failure signature, entering into a repair mode upon reporting the failure, and operating in the normal mode upon determining that the error has not occurred.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of repairing a storage device including a non-volatile memory, comprising:
powering on the storage device;
performing a booting sequence;
determining whether an error has occurred during the booting sequence or during a normal mode;
writing a failure signature to a predetermined signature address in the non-volatile memory upon determining that the error has occurred;
reporting a failure to a host upon writing the failure signature;
entering into a repair mode upon reporting the failure; and
operating in the normal mode upon determining that the error has not occurred.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein performing the booting sequence comprises:
executing a read-only memory (ROM) code that has been written to ROM;
loading a firmware code from the non-volatile memory to random access memory (RAM); and
reading flash translation layer (FM) metadata from the non-volatile memory,
wherein determining whether the error has occurred comprises determining whether the error is present in the FTL metadata.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein entering into the repair mode comprises:
receiving an FTL format command issued by a repair application program stored in the host;
initializing the FTL metadata in response to receiving the FTL format command; and
erasing the failure signature from the signature address.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein initializing the FTL metadata comprises:
erasing at least one block comprising the FTL metadata; and
generating and writing new initial metadata to a predetermined address.

5. The method of claim 3 , wherein the FTL format command is one command from among a plurality of commands predefined in the repair application program, and the FTL command is a vendor specific command.

6. The method of claim 3 , further comprising:
entering into the normal mode after erasing the failure signature.

7. The method of claim 3 , wherein the error is determined to he present in the FTL metadata upon determining that the FTL metadata is not found at a predetermined address, that an uncorrectable error has occurred in the FTL metadata, that the FTL metadata has a checksum error, or that a number of free blocks in the FTL, metadata is zero.

8. The method of claim , wherein the FTL: metadata comprises:
mapping data used to perform a mapping operation between a logical address and a physical address, an attribute of a memory block indicating whether the memory block is a log block or a free block, and the number of free blocks.

9. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:
reading the failure signature or a success signature written to the predetermined signature address before loading the firmware code from the non-volatile memory to the RAM.

10. A method of operating an electronic system capable of repairing a storage device using an application program, the method comprising:
power on the storage device;
receiving a failure report from the storage device upon an error occurring during a booting sequence of the storage device or during a normal mode;
displaying a failure message to a user in response to receiving the failure report;
issuing a user query to the user to determine whether to perform a repair operation; and
issuing a device repair command to the storage device in response to the user query, wherein the error occurs in flash translation layer (FTL) metadata and the device repair command comprises an FTL format command.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the FTL, format command is one command from among a plurality of commands predefined in the application program, and the FTL format command is a vendor specific command.

12. The method of claim 10 , further comprising:
issuing a user query to the user, before issuing the FTL command to the storage device, to determine whether to perform a data backup operation; and
issuing a data backup command to the storage device in response to the user query.

13. The method of claim 10 , further comprising:
writing a failure signature, by the storage device, to a predetermined signature address upon the error occurring in the FTL metadata.

14. The method of claim 13 , further comprising:
initializing the FTL metadata, by the storage device, in response to the FTL format command; and
erasing the failure signature from the predetermined signature address.

15. A method of repairing a storage device including a non-volatile memory, comprising:
performing a booting sequence;
determining whether an error has occurred during the booting sequence;
erasing an existing failure signature from a signature address in the non-volatile memory upon determining that the error has not occurred;
writing a normal signature to the signature address upon determining that the error has not occurred;
writing a new failure signature to the signature address upon determining that the error has occurred;
reporting a failure to a host upon writing the new failure signature; and
entering into a repair triode upon reporting the new failure.

16. The method of claim 15 , further comprising operating in a normal mode upon determining that the error has not occurred.

17. The method of claim 15 , wherein performing the booting sequence comprises:
executing a read-only memory (ROM) code that has been written to ROM;
loading a firmware code from the non-volatile memory to random access memory (RAM); and
reading flash translation layer (FTL) metadata from the non-volatile memory,
wherein determining whether the error has occurred comprises determining whether the error is present in the FTL metadata.

18. The method of claim 17 , wherein entering into the repair mode comprises:
receiving an FTL format command issued by a repair application program stored in the host;
initializing the FTL metadata in response to receiving the FTL format command; and
erasing the failure signature from the signature address.

19. The method of claim 18 , wherein initializing the FTL metadata comprises:
erasing at least one block comprising the FTL metadata; and
generating and writing new initial metadata to a predetermined address.

Assignees

• Samsung Electronics Co Ltd

Inventors

• Lee Joon Ho
• Park Jong Tae

Classifications

• G11C2029/0407

  on power on · CPC title

• G11C29/702

  by replacing auxiliary circuits, e.g. spare voltage generators, decoders or sense amplifiers, to be used instead of defective ones · CPC title

• G11C29/38

  Response verification devices · CPC title

• G06F11/1417

  Boot up procedures · CPC title

• G06F11/0793

  Remedial or corrective actions (recovery from an exception in an instruction pipeline G06F9/3861; by retry G06F11/1402; for recovering from a failure of a protocol instance or entity H04L69/40) · CPC title