DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action, based on application 18/759,635 filed 28 June 2024, is filed in response to applicant’s amendment and remarks filed 2 January 2026. Claims 1-20 are currently pending and have been fully considered below.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s remarks, filed 2 January 2026 in response to the Office Action mailed 10 June 2025, have been fully considered below.
Claim Objections
The Office withdraws the previously issued objection in response to applicant’s amendment and remarks.
Claim Rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 101
The Office withdraws the previously issued rejection in response to applicant’s amendment and remarks.
Claim Rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 102/103
The applicant traverses the prior art rejection to the claims alleging cited prior art fails to disclose the features of Claim 1 as amended. Specifically, the applicant has incorporated a new feature of an environmental parameter table for providing the basis of determining an achievable capacity of a storage device. The Office has entered new grounds of rejection responsive to applicant’s amendment.
Claim Objections
The following claim(s) is/are objected to due to informalities:
Claims 18-20: “One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media” should be “The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media” to show proper antecedent basis/dependency.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claim(s) 1, 3-6, 8, 9, 11-14, and 16-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over MUTHIAH et al (US PGPub 2023/0401004) in further view of WILLIAMS et al (US PGPub 2019/0179929).
With respect to Claim 1, MUTHIAH discloses a method, comprising:
determining a location of a storage device in a storage enclosure (Abstract – “obtaining a spatial position for the data storage device in a storage enclosure”; Figure 3, 304; ¶[0039] – “A storage device may use a position mapping table to obtain a position in an enclosure”);
based on the location of a storage device in a storage enclosure, determining environmental parameters associated with the location of the storage device (Abstract – “proactively biasing one or more parameters for controlling the device memory , based on the spatial position”; Figure 3, 306; ¶[0039] – “The storage device may determine minimum adjustments to flash translation layer parameters based on the position”);
determining, based on an environmental parameter table (Fig 2B, Table 222 is a thermal map that associates physical locations of a drive slots to temperatures), the achievable capacity of the storage device based on the environmental parameters associated with the location of the storage device (¶[0032] – “the drives may follow a different storage density policy according to their position in server or storage enclosure”); and
formatting the storage device based on the determined achievable capacity (¶[0072] – “the one or more parameters may be used by the controller for controlling a storage density policy based on spatial position. In some aspects, the storage density policy is for determine whether the data storage device uses hybrid writes rather than triple-level cell (TLC) writes {or ‘formats’}. This may be the case if the host allows the capacity to be altered for some SSDs, then SSDs taking hot locations may opt for hybrid writes rather than TLC writes owing to better data protection for a different performance point”. By choosing either Hybrid vs TLC writes, the device is selecting between two different write formats).
MUTHIAH may not explicitly disclose wherein the environmental parameter table provides achievable capacity of the storage device at different environmental parameters.
However, WILLIAMS discloses wherein the environmental parameter table provides achievable capacity of the storage device at different environmental parameters (Fig 9x illustrates tables that maps relationships between storage devices, capacity, and temperature).
MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of management of metadata for storage devices. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS before him or her, to modify the thermal table of MUTHIAH to include associating the mapping of drive slots to temperatures to further include a mapping to write formal or capacity as taught by WILLIAMS. A motivation for doing so would have been to organize the metadata in a format such that the metadata may be stored and retrieved in a way that reduces the amount of storage or resources needed to handle the associated values of the metadata (¶[0028]) providing for an efficiency implementing a policy that associates a write format with a particular storage location and temperature. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claims.
With respect to Claim 9, MUTHIAH discloses in a computing environment, a method performed at least in part on at least one processor (¶[0041-0042] – processor), the method comprising:
determining a location of a storage device in a storage enclosure (Abstract – “obtaining a spatial position for the data storage device in a storage enclosure”; Figure 3, 304; ¶[0039] – “A storage device may use a position mapping table to obtain a position in an enclosure”);
based on the location of a storage device in a storage enclosure, determining environmental parameters associated with the location of the storage device (Abstract – “proactively biasing one or more parameters for controlling the device memory , based on the spatial position”; Figure 3, 306; ¶[0039] – “The storage device may determine minimum adjustments to flash translation layer parameters based on the position”);
determining, based on an environmental parameter table (Fig 2B, Table 222 is a thermal map that associates physical locations of a drive slots to temperatures), the achievable capacity of the storage device based on the environmental parameters associated with the location of the storage device (¶[0032] – “the drives may follow a different storage density policy according to their position in server or storage enclosure”); and
formatting the storage device based on the determined achievable capacity (¶[0072] – “the one or more parameters may be used by the controller for controlling a storage density policy based on spatial position. In some aspects, the storage density policy is for determine whether the data storage device uses hybrid writes rather than triple-level cell (TLC) writes {or ‘formats’}. This may be the case if the host allows the capacity to be altered for some SSDs, then SSDs taking hot locations may opt for hybrid writes rather than TLC writes owing to better data protection for a different performance point”. By choosing either Hybrid vs TLC writes, the device is selecting between two different write formats).
MUTHIAH may not explicitly disclose wherein the environmental parameter table provides achievable capacity of the storage device at different environmental parameters.
However, WILLIAMS discloses wherein the environmental parameter table provides achievable capacity of the storage device at different environmental parameters (Fig 9x illustrates tables that maps relationships between storage devices, capacity, and temperature).
MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of management of metadata for storage devices. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS before him or her, to modify the thermal table of MUTHIAH to include associating the mapping of drive slots to temperatures to further include a mapping to write formal or capacity as taught by WILLIAMS. A motivation for doing so would have been to organize the metadata in a format such that the metadata may be stored and retrieved in a way that reduces the amount of storage or resources needed to handle the associated values of the metadata (¶[0028]) providing for an efficiency implementing a policy that associates a write format with a particular storage location and temperature. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claims.
With respect to Claim 17, MUTHIAH discloses one or more tangible computer-readable storage media encoding computer-executable instructions for executing on a computer system a computer process (¶]0041-0042] – computer readable media), the computer process comprising:
determining a location of a storage device in a storage enclosure (Abstract – “obtaining a spatial position for the data storage device in a storage enclosure”; Figure 3, 304; ¶[0039] – “A storage device may use a position mapping table to obtain a position in an enclosure”);
based on the location of a storage device in a storage enclosure, determining environmental parameters associated with the location of the storage device (Abstract – “proactively biasing one or more parameters for controlling the device memory , based on the spatial position”; Figure 3, 306; ¶[0039] – “The storage device may determine minimum adjustments to flash translation layer parameters based on the position”);
determining, based on an environmental parameter table (Fig 2B, Table 222 is a thermal map that associates physical locations of a drive slots to temperatures), the achievable capacity of the storage device based on the environmental parameters associated with the location of the storage device (¶[0032] – “the drives may follow a different storage density policy according to their position in server or storage enclosure”); and
formatting the storage device based on the determined achievable capacity (¶[0072] – “the one or more parameters may be used by the controller for controlling a storage density policy based on spatial position. In some aspects, the storage density policy is for determine whether the data storage device uses hybrid writes rather than triple-level cell (TLC) writes {or ‘formats’}. This may be the case if the host allows the capacity to be altered for some SSDs, then SSDs taking hot locations may opt for hybrid writes rather than TLC writes owing to better data protection for a different performance point”. By choosing either Hybrid vs TLC writes, the device is selecting between two different write formats).
MUTHIAH may not explicitly disclose wherein the environmental parameter table provides achievable capacity of the storage device at different environmental parameters.
However, WILLIAMS discloses wherein the environmental parameter table provides achievable capacity of the storage device at different environmental parameters (Fig 9x illustrates tables that maps relationships between storage devices, capacity, and temperature).
MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of management of metadata for storage devices. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of
MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS before him or her, to modify the thermal table of MUTHIAH to include associating the mapping of drive slots to temperatures to further include a mapping to write formal or capacity as taught by WILLIAMS. A motivation for doing so would have been to organize the metadata in a format such that the metadata may be stored and retrieved in a way that reduces the amount of storage or resources needed to handle the associated values of the metadata (¶[0028]) providing for an efficiency implementing a policy that associates a write format with a particular storage location and temperature. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claims.
With respect to Claims 3, 11, and 18, the combination of MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS disclose the methods/media of each respective parent claim.
MUTHIAH further discloses wherein the environmental parameters include at least one of temperature and vibration at the location of the storage device in the storage enclosure (Fig 2B, 2D illustrate thermal maps for a storage enclosure; ¶[0019] – “the thermal map may be shown to include {a} table that maps the individual drive slots to temperatures”).
With respect to Claims 4, 12, and 19, the combination of MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS disclose the methods/media of each respective parent claim.
MUTHIAH further discloses wherein formatting the storage device based on the determined achievable capacity further comprising formatting areal density capacity (ADC) of the storage device based on the determined achievable capacity (¶[0072] – “the one or more parameters may be used by the controller for controlling a storage density policy based on spatial position. In some aspects, the storage density policy is for determine whether the data storage device uses hybrid writes rather than triple-level cell (TLC) writes {or ‘formats’}. This may be the case if the host allows the capacity to be altered for some SSDs, then SSDs taking hot locations may opt for hybrid writes rather than TLC writes owing to better data protection for a different performance point”. By choosing either Hybrid vs TLC writes, the device is selecting between two different write formats).
With respect to Claims 5 and 13, the combination of MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS disclose the method of each respective parent claim.
MUTHIAH further discloses wherein determining the location of a storage device in a storage enclosure further comprising receiving a position mapping table from the storage device newly configured in the storage enclosure (¶[0039] – “a storage device may use a position mapping table to obtain a position in an enclosure”).
MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS may not explicitly disclose wherein the position mapping table is an advertisement packet.
However, MUTHIAH states at ¶[0039] that the position information may be obtained from a source of data and the position information is required in order to determine adjustments to parameters and ¶[0054] states that “the controller may be configured to obtain a spatial position for the data storage device in a storage enclosure” which at least suggests that obtaining the position information from a specific source is unimportant. As such, with the suggestions asserted by MUTHIAH, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have taken into consideration the combination of MUTHIAH’s and WILLIAMS’s explicit teachings and suggestions to have been able to modify the combination of MUTHIAH’s and WILLIAMS’s explicit teachings such that position information is obtained from another source including an advertisement packet with a reasonable expectation of success. A motivation for doing so would be to obtain needed information from another source should the primary source be unavailable for whatever reason or if the another source already has the needed information such that building the position mapping table becomes unnecessary.
With respect to Claims 6, 14, and 20, the combination of MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS disclose the method/media of each respective parent claim.
MUTHIAH further discloses receiving from the storage device, information regarding a write operation to be performed by the storage device; determining an environmental parameter required for performing the write operation; and adjusting an operational parameter of the storage enclosure based on the environmental parameter required for performing the write operation (¶[0072] – “the one or more parameters {or ‘information regarding a write operation’} may be used by the controller for controlling a storage density policy based on spatial position. In some aspects, the storage density policy is for determine whether the data storage device uses hybrid writes rather than triple-level cell (TLC) writes. This may be the case if the host allows the capacity to be altered for some SSDs, then SSDs taking hot locations may opt for hybrid writes rather than TLC writes owing to better data protection for a different performance point”; ¶[0020-0021] – thermal maps may be adjusted to more uniform temperatures based on operation of other components e.g. further ventilation, fans that send cold air or remove hot air from the enclosure, etc.).
With respect to Claims 8 and 16, the combination of MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS disclose the method of each respective parent claim.
MUTHIAH further discloses wherein the environmental parameter is temperature level (¶[0019] – “as temperatures rise near the back of the enclosure, drives in those drive slots are likely to be subject to thermal throttling”).
MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS may not explicitly disclose wherein the operational parameter is level of fluidic cooling.
However, MUTHIAH states at ¶[0020] that “one or more fans may similarly drive air flow … to cool the enclosure” and “this may cause the compartments and the drives therein to maintain more uniform temperatures” which at least suggests that modifications may be made to the thermal map to account for variables that may modify temperatures. As such, with the suggestions asserted by MUTHIAH, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have taken into consideration the combination of MUTHIAH’s and WILLIAM’s explicit teachings and suggestions to have been able to modify the combination of MUTHIAH’s and WILLIAM’s explicit teachings such that temperatures in a thermal map may be adjusted to account for other variables that impact temperatures including levels of fluidic cooling with a reasonable expectation of success. A motivation for doing so would be to provide a more accurate representation of the storage picture such that the system isn’t overly pessimistic thus leading to a more optimized storage system.
Claim(s) 2, 7, 10, and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over MUTHIAH in further view of WILLIAMS and COOLEY et al (US Patent 7,565,226).
With respect to Claims 2 and 10, the combination of MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS discloses the method of each respective parent claim.
MUTHIAH and WILLIAJMS may not explicitly disclose wherein the storage device is a disc drive.
However, COOLEY discloses wherein the storage device is a disc drive (Col 1, Lines 14-36 – internal vibrational resonance can cause read/write function of hard disk drives to fail due to the increase in density and reductions in size of hard disk drives).
MUTHIAH, WILLIAMS, and COOLEY are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of controlling storage devices. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of MUTHIAH, WILLIAMS, and COOLEY before him or her, to modify the SSD of the combination of MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS to include disk drives as taught by COOLEY. A motivation for doing so would have been to recognize disk drives also experience a quality-of-service drop responsive to reaching thermal throttling and thus may also benefit from biasing schemes to reduce unwanted throttling. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine MUTHIAH, WILLIAMS, and COOLEY to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claims.
With respect to Claims 7 and 15, the combination of MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS disclose the method of each respective parent claim.
MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS may not explicitly disclose wherein the environmental parameter is vibration level and the operational parameter is speed of a cooling fan.
However, COOLEY discloses wherein the environmental parameter is vibration level and the operational parameter is speed of a cooling fan (Col 1, Lines 14-36 – internal vibrational resonance can cause read/write function of hard disk drives to fail due to the increase in density and reductions in size of hard disk drives).
MUTHIAH. WILLIAMS, and COOLEY are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor of controlling storage devices. Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of MUTHIAH, WILLIAMS, and COOLEY before him or her, to modify the parameters used to control storage devices based on a thermal profile of the combination of MUTHIAH and WILLIAMS to include other profiles that effect storage behavior including vibrations as taught by COOLEY. A motivation for doing so would have been to recognize disk drives also experience a quality-of-service drop responsive to excessive vibrations and thus may also benefit from biasing schemes to reduce storage errors. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine MUTHIAH, WILLIAMMS, and COOLEY to obtain the invention as specified in the instant claims.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ERIC T LOONAN whose telephone number is (571)272-6994. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8am-5pm.
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/ERIC T LOONAN/Examiner, Art Unit 2137