Patent ID: 8041891
Filing Date: 2011-10-18
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) system having an ability to be migrated from a first RAID level to a second RAID level, the system comprising: a server central processing unit (CPU) comprising processing logic that is configurable to execute a migration computer software program to migrate the system from the first RAID level to the second RAID level; a server memory device comprising memory locations located at memory addresses, the server memory locations being configured to have electronic information written thereto and read therefrom, at least a portion of the memory addresses of the server memory device being allocated for use as a migration buffer; a communications bus, the server CPU and the server memory device being connected to the bus; an input/output (I/O) interface device, the I/O interface device being connected to the bus; and at least first and second physical disk drives (PDs) connected to the I/O interface device, each PD having a data storage region for storing data and a data disk format (DDF) storage region for storing configuration relating to the PD, the data storage region of each PD comprising a plurality of data storage addresses, the DDF storage region comprising one or more DDF storage addresses, the I/O interface device being configured to write to and read from the addresses of each of the PDs, wherein when the server CPU executes the migration computer software program, the server CPU configures the I/O interface device to migrate the RAID system from a first virtual disk drive (VD