Granted Patent B2

US 7,062,673 · App. 10/441,176 · Granted Jun 13, 2006

Abstract

Claims (33)

1. A system including computer usable instructions for causing a digital processing apparatus to undertake method acts in a mirrored storage system having N pair of storage devices, the devices in a pair being mates, the method acts comprising:

allocating 1/(2N−1) of each device as a spare region, in which substantially no data is stored except when a device fails;

partitioning a remaining non-spare region of each disk into (2N−2) data partitions; and

in the event of a failed first device, copying data in data partitions of a mate of the failed first device into respective spare regions of remaining non-failed devices.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the storage devices establish a RAID-1 system.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the storage devices are arranged on a blade.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein if the mate fails after the first device fails, data stored on the mate remains available on non-failed devices.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein if a second device that is not a mate to the first device fails after the first device fails, some data stored on the second device remains available on a mate of the second device, and remaining data stored on the second device remains available on the mate of the first device.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the storage devices are hard disk drives.

7. The system of claim 1 , wherein the storage devices are HDAs.

8. A data storage system comprising:

plural data storage devices in a RAID-1 configuration;

a spare region being allocated on each device;

data storage regions being allocated on each device;

mean for, in the event of a failed first device, copying data in each data storage region of a mate of the failed device into a respective spare region of remaining non-failed devices, wherein if a second device that is not a mate to the first device fails after the first device fails, some data stored on the second device remains available on a mate of the second device, and remaining data stored on the second device remains available on the mate of the first device.

9. The system of claim 8 , wherein the storage devices are arranged on a blade.

10. The system of claim 8 , wherein if the mate fails after the first device fails, data scored on the mate remains available on non-failed devices.

11. The system of claim 8 , wherein the storage devices are at least one of: hard disk drives, and HDAs.

12. A data storage system comprising:

plural data storage devices in a RAID-1 configuration;

a spare region being allocated on each device;

data storage regions being allocated on each device and further comprising N pair of data storage devices, the spare region of each device representing 1/(2N−1) of the total storage capacity of the device.

13. A data storage system comprising:

plural data storage devices in a RAID-1 configuration;

a spare region being allocated on each device;

data storage regions being allocated on each device and further comprising N pair of data storage devices, each device having (2N−2) data storage regions.

14. A method for operating a RAID-1 data storage system having N pair of data storage devices, the data storage devices in a pair being mates of each other, comprising the acts of:

allocating 1/(2N−1) of each device as a spare region;

partitioning a remaining non-spare region into (2N−2) data partitions; and

in the event of a failure of a first device, copying data from its mate to devices not paired with the first device.

15. The method of claim 14 , comprising, in the event of a failed first device, copying data in each data partition of a mate of the failed first device into a respective spare region of remaining non-failed devices.

16. The method of claim 14 , comprising supporting the storage devices on a blade.

17. The system of claim 14 , wherein the storage devices are hard disk drives.

Assignments (6)