Patents by Inventor William Brooks Ott

William Brooks Ott has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Mechanism for eliminating need for flash memory in software RAID
    Patent number: 6823450
    Abstract: A method and mechanism for booting an operating system in a Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (RAID) is disclosed. The method includes: searching for a copy of a RAID driver on at least one boot partition of a disk in the disk array, wherein copies of the RAID driver are stored in boot partitions of at least two of the disks in the disk array; and loading the RAID driver, if the RAID driver is found. In the preferred embodiment, the boot partitions of the disks are searched until a working copy of the RAID driver is found. The RAID driver is loaded and the RAID implemented. The operating system may then be booted. In this manner, the need for a Flash memory device for storing the RAID driver is eliminated. The method and mechanism can be implemented in existing systems not designed to support software RAID.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 11, 2001
    Date of Patent: November 23, 2004
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventor: William Brooks Ott
  • Mechanism for eliminating need for flash memory in software RAID
    Publication number: 20020178351
    Abstract: A method and mechanism for booting an operating system in a Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (RAID) is disclosed. The method includes: searching for a copy of a RAID driver on at least one boot partition of a disk in the disk array, wherein copies of the RAID driver are stored in boot partitions of at least two of the disks in the disk array; and loading the RAID driver, if the RAID driver is found. In the preferred embodiment, the boot partitions of the disks are searched until a working copy of the RAID driver is found. The RAID driver is loaded and the RAID implemented. The operating system may then be booted. In this manner, the need for a Flash memory device for storing the RAID driver is eliminated. The method and mechanism can be implemented in existing systems not designed to support software RAID.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 11, 2001
    Publication date: November 28, 2002
    Applicant: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventor: William Brooks Ott