A Page-mapping Consistency Protecting Method for Soft Error Damage in Flash-based Storage

Abstract

A soft error in flash-based storage might impair a host system. For instance, if the soft error infiltrates the storage mapping function, the host system could experience severe operation failures, such as data corruption or a drive freeze. To harden the storage against soft errors, we propose a novel page-mapping consistency checker (PCK) method implemented with a lightweight redundancy. Our PCK exploits a small page tracing table written previously and only performs mapping-related functions again with the time redundant. Then, with that redundancy result, the storage detects page mapping corruption and finally recovers it. Consequently, the flash-based storage keeps the page-mapping consistency and improves the host system's reliability.