Abstract: A modular storage system includes a modular storage system module, or “brick,” housing a disk drive array containing computer data. Each brick includes a backplane, fan(s) and a skin and has self-describing attributes that allow external control logic to auto-configure for each brick. The brick backplane includes a non-volatile memory device, such as a serial EEPROM, that can maintain and provide static and dynamic information regarding the brick and any disk drives in the disk drive array housed in the brick. The bricks can be attached to one or more base stations implementing and/or incorporating application-specific features and/or functions. Each base station also includes means for supplying power to the bricks and the disk drives contained in the bricks, RAID or other disk drive array control logic. Mounting apparatus ensures that a brick mounted to a base station, is immobilized, thus protecting the brick and electrical connection between the brick and the base station.

Abstract: A method of duplicating electronically stored data that includes coupling a duplicating device between an original information storage device and a destination storage device, and streaming data from the original information storage device to the duplicating device. An embodiment of the method also includes segmenting the streaming data, determining a length of an uncompressed data segment, and calculating a length of the data segment when compressed. This embodiment further includes determining if the length of the data segment when compressed is less than some threshold, and copying a compressed data segment to the destination storage device if the length of the compressed data segment is less than the threshold, otherwise copying the uncompressed data segment to the destination storage device.

Abstract: An MD5 processing apparatus is a hardware-implemented MD5 process in a programmable device such as an FPGA or the like. The programmable device is programmed to include four processing engines, each of which performs a single MD5 stage having four MD5 operations performed by the MD5 stage. Each stage begins with four 32-bit values in an A register, a B register; a C register; and a D register. These values are processed using four sub-stages in the MD5 stage using a number of adders along with fixed nonlinear function processing units and fixed 32-bit-shift units. The fixed nonlinear function processing units in a given stage implement only the nonlinear function needed for the MD5 round being performed by the stage. Likewise, each fixed 32-bit-shift unit uses direct bit routing to effect bit shifts taking advantage of the cyclic nature of shifts required by the MD5 hashing algorithm.