Abstract: A memory cache device for a CD-ROM for use with a host computer capable of initially filling a clone area of the hard disk with data from the compact disc using a sequential striped fill process for copying a plurality of blocks of data from the compact disc to the hard disk, the process comprising the steps of: accessing a first block of data of a sequence of data blocks from the compact disc and copying the first block onto the hard disk, accessing a second block of data in the sequence of data blocks from the compact disc and not copying the second block to the hard disk, and accessing a third block of data in the sequence of data blocks from the compact disc and copying the third block onto the hard disk, the fill process continuing until the entire capacity of the hard disk devoted to cloning the compact disk is full, while leaving sufficient area for storage of blocks not initially copied in the fill process.

Abstract: A modified driver program for an external hard disk drive for a personal computer which manages a cache in RAM on the motherboard to speed up disk access operations is disclosed. A block of 2000 bytes contiguous to the driver code is reserved at boot time. An "on/off" data byte flag is managed to indicate whether the data in the cache is valid. For read operations of a size less than the size of the cache, a number of sequential blocks of data from the disk are stored in the cache. Any write operation potentially invalidates the cache data so the flag is set "off". On subsequent read operations, if the cache flag is "on", the driver code compares the contents of the cache to the requested data to see if it is stored in the cache. If it is, the data is read from the cache as opposed to the disk thereby speeding up the access.