Recovery of failed disks in an array of disks

A computer system for substituting a failed disk, the system comprising:

• a CPU, a computer readable memory and a computer readable storage media;
• first program instructions to determine I/O characteristics of one or more disks in an array by polling each of the one or more disks of the array, wherein the I/O characteristics are READ and ACCESS operations in RANDOM and SEQUENTIAL operations provided as statistics used to decipher READ to WRITE ratio of each of the one or more failed disks in the array,
• second program instructions to monitor the one or more disks in the array to determine when any of the one or more of the disks have failed in the array;
• third program instructions to nominate a disk from a pool of disks using a look up table showing efficiencies of different technologies based on the I/O characteristics of one or more failed disks in the array;
• fourth program instructions to automatically rebuild the failed disk by substituting the failed disk with a substitute disk selected from the pool of disks, based on the I/O characteristics of the one or more failed disks prior to failure, the rebuilding being performed with ongoing I/O requests running at full speed;
• and
• fifth program instructions to the I/O characteristics are weighted, wherein
• the first, second, third, fourth and fifth program instructions are stored on the computer readable storage media for execution by the CPU via the computer readable memory.

A method of deploying a system for substituting failed disks in an array comprising:

• providing a computer infrastructure, being operable to:
• monitor one or more disks in an array to determine a failure of any of the one or more of the disks;
• and
• automatically substitute the failed disk using a substitute disk from a pool of substitute disks varying technologies, based on matching of I/O characteristics of the one or more failed disks prior to failure.