Parity storing method and error block recovering method in external storage subsystem

A machine readable storage comprising multiple disk drives each comprising a plurality of storage blocks, the storage comprising:

• a programmed computer processor associating storage blocks of the disk drives to a virtual three-dimensional block matrix of virtual data blocks with virtual parity blocks allocated to each virtual data block plane, and controlling data input/output to/from the disk drives.

A machine readable storage system, comprising:

• a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) comprising disk drives each having a plurality of storage blocks;
• a host computer processing data and requesting data input/output of the disk drives;
• a controller in communication with the host computer and the RAID, and controlling the RAID operations according to a process of associating storage blocks of the disk drives to a virtual three-dimensional block matrix of virtual data blocks with virtual parity blocks allocated to each virtual data block plane.

A method, comprising:

• allocating storage blocks of disk drives according to a virtual three-dimensional block matrix of virtual data blocks and virtual parity block planes corresponding to each virtual data block plane to store data and parity information in the storage blocks of the disk drives;
• and
• using the virtual parity plane and the corresponding virtual data block plane to recover any number of error blocks in the corresponding allocated storage blocks.

A machine readable storage comprising multiple disk drives each comprising a plurality of storage blocks, the storage comprising:

• a programmed computer processor associating storage blocks of the disk drives to a virtual three-dimensional block matrix of virtual data blocks with virtual error information blocks allocated to each virtual data block plane, and recovering any number of error blocks in the storage blocks according to the error information blocks corresponding to each virtual data block plane.