Partial-MDS Codes and Their Application to RAID Type of Architectures

• Published in: IEEE transactions on information theory Vol. 59; no. 7; pp. 4510 - 4519
• Main Authors: Blaum, M., Hafner, J. L., Hetzler, S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01-07-2013; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Array codes; Codes; Coding theory; Coding, codes; Disk drives; Encoding; Error correction codes; error-correcting codes (ECCs); Exact sciences and technology; flash storage devices; Hard disks; hard errors; Information theory; Information, signal and communications theory; maximum distance separable (MDS) codes; Optical fiber communications; Optical telecommunications; Parity check codes; RAID architectures; Reed-Solomon codes; Signal and communications theory; solid-state drives (SSDs); Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; United States; North America; America; Reed Solomon code; Reed―Solomon codes; hard errors; Polarization mode dispersion; solid-state drives (SSDs); maximum distance separable (MDS) codes; flash storage devices; Least squares method; Error correcting code; Optical fiber communication; Array codes; Hard disk; RAID architectures; error-correcting codes (ECCs)
• ISSN: 0018-9448; 1557-9654
• DOI: 10.1109/TIT.2013.2252395

A family of codes with a natural 2-D structure is presented, inspired by an application of redundant arrays of independent disks (RAID) type of architectures whose units are solid-state drives (SSDs). Arrays of SSDs behave differently from arrays of hard disk drives, since hard errors in sectors are common and traditional RAID approaches (like RAID 5 or RAID 6) may be either insufficient or excessive. An efficient solution to this problem is given by the new codes presented, called partial maximum distance separable (PMDS) codes.