Patent ID: 9652343
Date: 2017-05-16
CPC Classifications: G06F

Claim:
1. A redundant array of independent disks (RAID) hot spare system comprising: (a) plurality of pass-thru disk drive controllers (PTDDCs); and (b) plurality of local disk drives (LDDs); wherein: said plurality of PTDDCs each comprise a pass-thru input (PTI) port, pass-thru output (PTO) port, and disk drive interface (DDI) port; said PTI port, said PTO port, and said DDI port each comprise a serial advanced technology attachment (SATA) interface; said plurality of PTDDCs are each connected in a serial daisy-chain with only the PTI port of a member PTDDC in said daisy-chain connected to the PTO port of a previous PTDDC in said daisy-chain and the PTO port of said member PTDDC connected to the PTI port of a next PTDDC in said daisy-chain; said plurality of PTDDCs are individually electrically coupled via said DDI port on said individual PTDDC to one of said plurality of said LDDs; said daisy-chain comprises a first PTDDC at the beginning of said daisy-chain further comprising a first PTI port, a first PTO port, and a first DDI port; said first PTDDC is configured for connection to a host computer system (HCS) having a host bus adapter (HBA) via said first PTI port; said first PTDDC maintains a set of phantom disk drive registers having a reported maximum logical block address (LBA) virtual address space that is larger than the number of logical blocks present on each of said plurality of said LDDs; said phantom disk drive registers are configured to present only a single SATA disk drive interface to said HCS; said plurality of LDDs are partitioned into a subset comprising a RAID storage array (RSA) and a subset comprising one or more hot spare drives (HSD); said plurality of PTDDCs are configured to monitor disk drives in said RSA for hardware errors and hardware failures; said plurality of PTDDCs are configured to copy contents of mirrored RAID disk drive corresponding to a failed disk drive (FDD) in said RSA to said HSD when said hardware errors and hardware failures are detected; said plurality of PTDDCs are configured to remap LBA addresses within a PTDDC corresponding to said FDD in said RSA to a PTDDC corresponding to said HSD when said hardware errors and hardware failures are detected; and said RSA is reconfigured by said LBA remapping operation to incorporate said HSD into said RSA as a replacement for said FDD in said RSA.