Method and system for striping spares in a data storage system including an array of disk drives

A method of distributing storage in a data storage system, comprising:

• a) creating a plurality of virtual storage devices wherein each of said virtual storage devices comprises storage space located in a subset of a plurality of physical storage devices;
• b) distributing data storage, data redundancy storage, and spare storage to each of said plurality of virtual storage devices, wherein each of said plurality of storage devices comprises data storage, data redundancy storage, and spare storage from multiple virtual storage devices;
• and
• c) distributing said spare storage at a region of each of said plurality of physical storage devices.

A method of distributing storage in a data storage system, comprising:

• a) dividing each of a plurality of physical storage devices into a number of slices;
• b) assigning each slice in said plurality of physical storage devices to one of a plurality of virtual storage devices, wherein each of said plurality of virtual storage devices comprises data storage and spare storage from a subset of said plurality of physical storage devices,
• c) allocating data storage from multiple virtual storage devices to slices in a first region of each of said plurality of physical storage devices;
• and
• d) allocating spare storage from multiple virtual storage devices to slices in a second region of each of said plurality of storage devices.

A data storage system, comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a computer readable memory coupled to said processor wherein said memory contains program instructions that when executed implements a method of distributing storage in said data storage system, comprising:
• a) creating a plurality of virtual storage devices wherein each of said virtual storage devices comprises storage space in one or more of a plurality of storage devices;
• b) distributing data storage and spare storage to each of said plurality of virtual storage devices, wherein each of said plurality of storage devices comprises data storage and spare storage from one or more virtual storage devices;
• and
• c) distributing said spare storage at one end of each of said plurality of storage devices.