Rebuilding data on flash memory in response to a storage device failure regardless of the type of storage device that fails

Data storage equipment, comprising:

• memory;
• and
• control circuitry coupled to the memory, the memory storing instructions which, when carried out by the control circuitry, cause the control circuitry to:
• store data on a group of hard disk drives (HDDs) of a first storage tier, the group of HDDs being constructed and arranged to maintain data availability following a HDD failure,
• after storing the data on the group of HDDs, detect a failure of a particular HDD of the group of HDDs, and
• after detecting the failure of the particular HDD, rebuild a particular portion of data onto a solid state drive (SSD) of a second storage tier that is faster than the first storage tier based on other portions of the data residing on remaining HDDs of the group of HDDs other than the particular HDD, the particular portion of the data having resided on the particular HDD that failed;
• wherein the control circuitry, when rebuilding the particular portion of data onto the SSD based on other portions of the data residing on remaining HDDs of the group of HDDs other than the particular HDD, is constructed and arranged to:
• read a first portion of the data from a first HDD of the group of HDDs, the first portion of the data being different from the particular portion of the data, and the first HDD being different from the particular HDD,
• read a second portion of the data from a second HDD of the group of HDDs, the second portion of the data being different from the particular portion of the data, and the second HDD being different from the particular HDD,
• perform a reconstruction operation that reconstructs the particular portion of data from the first portion of the data and the second portion of the data, and
• write the particular portion of the data to the SSD.

A computer program product having a non-transitory computer readable medium which stores a set of instructions to rebuild data from a group of hard disk drives (HDDs);

• the set of instructions, when carried out by computerized circuitry, causing the computerized circuitry to perform a method of:
• storing data on a group of HDDs of a first storage tier, the group of HDDs being constructed and arranged to maintain data availability following a HDD failure;
• after storing the data on the group of HDDs, detecting a failure of a particular HDD of the group of HDDs;
• and
• after detecting the failure of the particular HDD, rebuilding a particular portion of data onto a solid state drive (SSD) of a second storage tier that is faster than the first storage tier based on other portions of the data residing on remaining HDDs of the group of HDDs, the particular portion of the data having resided on the particular HDD that failed;
• wherein rebuilding the particular portion of data onto the SSD based on other portions of the data residing on remaining HDDs of the group of HDDs other than the particular HDD includes:
• reading a first portion of the data from a first HDD of the group of HDDs, the first portion of the data being different from the particular portion of the data, and the first HDD being different from the particular HDD,
• reading a second portion of the data from a second HDD of the group of HDDs, the second portion of the data being different from the particular portion of the data, and the second HDD being different from the particular HDD,
• performing a reconstruction operation that reconstructs the particular portion of data from the first portion of the data and the second portion of the data, and
• writing the particular portion of the data to the SSD.