Abstract: To allow a magnetic disk apparatus, such as an HDD, to perform real-time writing and reading of stream data or the like, the whole area of the disk is divided into a high reliability area and a low reliability area. The high reliability area is contiguous blocks to store reliability-critical data, whereas the low reliability area is contiguous blocks to store data which do not require high reliability. The high reliability area is divided into various management information storage areas, a metadata area and a high reliability data area to store reliability-critical data, such as encryption keys and programs. In the low reliability area, such data as image information having a real-time nature is stored.

Abstract: A method of configuring and performing stream data processing linked to a series of process points for high portability uses a link module to connect process points, called peer modules, to configure a stream data path. A single execution context is used for scheduling to enable high-performance processing. These constituent features are provided in a layer configuration to realize high portability and ease of development.