Innodisk, a Taiwanese maker of specialized DRAM and NAND-based products, has been granted a patent covering solid-state drives with a write protection circuitry.
Such SSDs could be used for a variety of embedded applications that require security, reliability, and longevity.
Most HDDs and SSDs these days are used to power applications that read, record and overwrite data. Even cold storage applications may need to update data from time to time. But there are also embedded applications that never do any kind of overwriting and for many of them overwriting is counterproductive or even illegal.
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The market of such devices is rather big and it spans from arcade and casino machines to industrial to mission-critical applications. Therefore, for a company like Innodisk it makes a great sense to patent an SSD with a write protection circuitry.
Unlike software write-protection solutions, Innodisk’s method uses hardware circuitry that may be activated using a hardware switch or by a command issued by the host. So far, Innodisk has implemented write protection capability using a jumper and a software trigger. Meanwhile, given that Innodisk builds a lot of tailor-made products, the company may implement its Write Protect technology the way a particular customer want it.
Innodisk filed an application for the patent 10,755,789 on August 6, 2019, and was granted the patent on August 25, 2020.
Source: USPTO
