Fault tolerant disk drive matrix

Abstract

A fault tolerant disk drive matrix comprises a plurality of disk drives. A mapping method associates a subset of the disk drives with a logical RAID-5 array. Each of the disk drives in the matrix may be associated with a plurality of different logical RAID-5 arrays. Logical units of data are subdivided into blocks and stored in an interleaved manner across the disk drives of the logical RAID-5 array. The arrangement of data and parity blocks on the logical RAID-5 arrays within the matrix reduces throughput degradation when a disk drive fails. In the event of a disk drive failure, data blocks stored on the failed disk drive can be reconstructed using redundancy blocks and data blocks from the surviving disk drives within the logical RAID-5 array. Replacement disk drives may also be provided to substitute for the failed disk drive in the logical RAID-5 array. Thus, the mapping of logical RAID-5 arrays to physical disk drives in the matrix may change in position and identity due to disk drive replacements caused by failures.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.