TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates to a cartridge memory, a tape cartridge, and a recording and reproducing system.

BACKGROUND ART

Magnetic recording media are widely used for storage of electronic data. In particular, magnetic tapes having low cost per data unit capacity have regained attention and are utilized in data centers and the like together with hard disk drives (HDDs) as recording media used in cloud storage services.

Magnetic tapes conforming to the Linier Tape Open (LTO) Ultrium standard are in widespread use as the magnetic tapes. A non-contact non-volatile memory using RF wireless communication called a cartridge memory (CM) is embedded in a tape cartridge conforming to the LTO Ultium standard (see, for example, Patent Document 1). Information such as manufacturing information, drive usage history, and vendor-specific management information are written to the cartridge memory, for example. The usage of the cartridge and the like can be checked in a short time by loading the cartridge into a drive and then the drive reading the above information from the cartridge memory.

As the storage capacity of the magnetic tape conforming to the LTO standard increases, the storage capacity of the cartridge memory needs to be increased. This is because the amount of information written to the cartridge memory increases in accordance with the storage capacity of the magnetic tape.

CITATION LIST

Patent Document

Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-109353

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Problems to be Solved by the Invention

However, the Liner Tape Open Generation 8 (LTO-8) or IBM 3592 standard specifies the storage capacity of the cartridge memory to be 16 KB. Thus, if the storage capacity of the cartridge memory is increased to exceed 16 KB in accordance with the increase in the information written to the cartridge memory, there is a possibility that compatibility with the above existing standards is lost.

An object of the present disclosure is to provide a cartridge memory, a tape cartridge, and a recording and reproducing system that can improve the storage capacity while maintaining compatibility with an existing standard.

Solutions to Problems

In order to solve the above problem, a first disclosure is

a cartridge memory used for a tape cartridge, including:

a communication unit that communicates with a recording and reproducing device using a wireless communication method defined by an ISO 14443-2 standard which is a wireless communication standard;

a non-volatile memory with a storage capacity exceeding 16 KB; and

a control unit that writes or reads data to or from the non-volatile memory on a word-by-word basis (2 bytes at a time) or on a block-by-block basis (32 bytes at a time), in which

the non-volatile memory includes a plurality of memory banks each having a storage capacity of 128 KB or less,

the control unit writes or reads data defined by a magnetic tape standard to or from one or two or more first memory banks among the plurality of the memory banks, and

additional data is written or read to or from one or two or more second memory banks other than the first memory bank.

A second disclosure is

a cartridge memory used for a tape cartridge, including:

a communication unit that communicates with a recording and reproducing device using a wireless communication method defined by an ISO 14443-2 standard which is a wireless communication standard;

a non-volatile memory with a storage capacity exceeding 16 KB; and

a control unit that writes or reads data to or from the non-volatile memory on a block-by-block basis (32 bytes at a time), in which

the non-volatile memory includes a plurality of memory banks each having a storage capacity of 2 MB or less,

the control unit writes or reads data defined by a magnetic tape standard to or from one or two or more first memory banks among the plurality of the memory banks, and

additional data is written or read to or from one or two or more second memory banks other than the first memory bank.

Effects of the Invention

According to the present disclosure, the storage capacity can be improved while maintaining compatibility with an existing standard. Note that the present disclosure may have an effect not necessarily limited to the one described herein but any effect described in the present disclosure or an effect different therefrom.

