ITC/USA 2005 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2005 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Solid state disk characteristics make them ideal for data collection in both harsh environments and secure telemetry application. In comparison to their magnetic counterparts, solid state disks are faster, more reliable, extremely durable and, with changing economies and geometries, more affordable and available in higher capacities than ever before. This paper will discuss solid state disk storage, access controls, and data elimination in relation to various telemetry scenarios. The reader will be introduced to the operational considerations of solid state disk data security and the underlying technical concepts of how these are implemented.

The focus of this thesis is on systems that employ both flash and magnetic disks as storage media. Considering the widely disparate I/O costs of flash disks currently on the market, our approach is a cost-aware one: we explore techniques that exploit the I/O costs of the underlying storage devices to improve I/O performance. We also study the asymmetric I/O properties of magnetic and flash disks and propose algorithms that take advantage of this asymmetry. Our work is geared towards database systems; however, most of the ideas presented in this thesis can be generalised to any data-intensive application. For the case of low-end, inexpensive flash devices with large capacities, we propose using them at the same level of the memory hierarchy as magnetic disks. In such setups, we study the problem of data placement, that is, on which type of storage medium each data page should be stored. We present a family of online algorithms that can be used to dynamically decide the optimal placement of each page. Our algorithms adapt to changing workloads for maximum I/O efficiency. We found that substantial performance benefits can be gained with such a design, especially for queries touching large sets of pages with read-intensive workloads. Moving one level higher in the storage hierarchy, we study the problem of buffer allocation in databases that store data across multiple storage devices. We present our novel approach to per-device memory allocation, under which both the I/O costs of the storage devices and the cache behaviour of the data stored on each medium determine the size of the main memory buffers that will be allocated to each device. Towards informed decisions, we found that the ability to predict the cache behaviour of devices under various cache sizes is of paramount importance. In light of this, we study the problem of efficiently tracking the hit ratio curve for each device and introduce a lowoverhead technique that provides high accuracy. The price and performance characteristics of high-end flash disks make them perfectly suitable for use as caches between the main memory and the magnetic disk(s) of a storage system. In this context, we primarily focus on the problem of deciding which data should be placed in the flash cache of a system: how the data flows from one level of the memory hierarchy to the others is crucial for the performance of such a system. Considering such decisions, we found that the I/O costs of the flash cache play a major role. We also study several implementation issues such as the optimal size of flash pages and the properties of the page directory of a flash cache. Finally, we explore sorting in external memory using external merge-sort, as the latter employs access patterns that can take full advantage of the I/O characteristics of flash memory. We study the problem of sorting hierarchical data, as such is necessary for a wide variety of applications including archiving scientific data and dealing with large XML datasets. The proposed algorithm efficiently exploits the hierarchical structure in order to minimize the number of disk accesses and optimise the utilization of available memory. Our proposals are not specific to sorting over flash memory: the presented techniques are highly efficient over magnetic disks as well.

Recently, Handheld devices are more and more popular. Most of them aim at the low price, small size, high computing power, and powerful functionalities. Therefore, the need for embedded operating systems in the market is absolutely vital. There are many embedded systems in the market, but embedded Linux has some advantages to be outstanding and widely accepted. For example, it has no proprietary problem and high portability, and is comparatively easy to be reconstructed and to develop new applications. Best of them all, it is open source software. Embedded systems are usually diskless systems. In order to keep permanent data in embedded Linux, using flash disk as its disk system is a widely adapted strategy. We use MTD (Memory Technology Devices) system to emulate flash memory as flash disk mounted into Linux virtual file system. This allows accessing flash memory with standard I/O operations without any extra effort. MTD system contains, ¡§user¡¨ and driver¡¨, two different modules. In driver modules, we use CFI (Common Flash Interface) to probe the flash chip and then partition it, while we use MTD BLOCK to emulate the flash partitions as block devices in user modules, and then mount them into Linux¡¦s virtual file system with JFFS2 (Journaling Flash File System version 2) type, which is a file system type specifically designed for flash devices according to the features of flash devices. The purpose of this thesis is to use MTD system to emulate Am29LV320DB flash chip as a flash disk in embedded Linux running on an ARM-based developing board, SMDK2410, designed by Samsung. I hope this porting can help the development of other advanced applications and provide an empirical platform for the research of embedded systems.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / Due to the rotating mechanism in mechanical disks, they cannot provide the top-level reliability required for operation in harsh military environments. This paper describes three COTS alternatives to mechanical disks: ruggedized mechanical disks, solid-state flash disks and stacked PC Cards. It discusses their cost-effectiveness and aspects such as environmental specifications, endurance and data reliability. It highlights several methods used by flash disks to enhance endurance and reliability, as well as flash pricing and density trends. It presents data security requirements in actual emergency situations, and how flash disks can meet these requirements. It concludes with a feature-by-feature comparison of ruggedized disks, flash disks and stacked PC Cards.

ITC/USA 2005 Conference Proceedings / The Forty-First Annual International Telemetering Conference and Technical Exhibition / October 24-27, 2005 / Riviera Hotel & Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper discusses data storage requirements for data acquisition systems, and evaluates the ability of three of the most popular COTS data storage solutions - mechanical disk, ruggedized mechanical disk and solid-state flash disk - to meet these requirements today and in the future. It addresses issues of capacity, data reliability, endurance, form factor, cost and security. It concludes with a discussion of trends to implement high-speed serial interfaces in data acquisition systems, and the challenges that these trends pose for COTS storage solutions.

The work deals with flash technology, the history of its development, current application of this technology and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of flash memories. It describes the integration of flash technology into mass storage devices and commonly used mechanisms that suppress the flash shortcomings for such application. The next part of the work focuses on analysis of commonly used buses for flash storage devices. Based on these theoretical foundations, text presents way to develop own flash based disk. The work focuses mainly on finding the most accessible platform for connecting the disk to personal computers - USB, on PCB design for storage module in Eagle CAD and implementation of necessary firmware for MCU and VHDL design for FPGA, that provide the disk functionality. At the end the work summarizes the results and outlines the way of further development.

The aim of Master’s thesis Control of the communication on the USB is realization hardware and software designed for microcontroller C8051F120 what is enabling recording of data on memory medium Flash drive. It includes study of USB, transfer protocols, which are needed and file system. The thesis deals about host type USB controllers and about USB controller MAX3421E fy Maxim, which has been choosen for development of software. It is required ability to create directories and files including recording data to file and ability of reading data from files in the file system FAT16.

This work relates to problematics of FAT32 file system metadata recovery from damaged flash drive or memory card and design of program capable of such recovery and comparision with existing solution for this task.