Patent ID: 7454566
Filing Date: 2008-11-18
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A method for adaptively reconfiguring a set of disk drives to implement a reconfigured RAID array comprising RAID 1 and RAID 5 data, wherein at least a subset of the set of disk drives is originally configured to implement an original RAID array comprising RAID 1 data, at least part of the data stored in the original RAID array being migrated into the reconfigured RAID array by converting the data, the method comprising: identifying a first RAID volume of a first RAID type that is associated with the original RAID array, including: applying the maximum partition size to each of the disk drives having available storage space to define the reconfigured RAID volume for storing data in RAID 5, including disk drives that are members of the original RAID array, to establish a RAID 5 partition on each disk drive of the reconfigured RAID array; and migrating the data from the original RAID array into portions of the reconfigured RAID array, including converting data stored in the original RAID array in RAID 1 format to a RAID 5 format consistent with the reconfigured RAID array, while converting selected partitions on disk drives from the original RAID array into partitions on the disk drives in the reconfigured RAID array.