Patent ID: 8171244

Claim:
A modular drive bay in a network storage system for archiving data, the modular drive bay comprising: one or more removable disk drives, the one or more removable disk drives operable to store archival data, the one or more removable disk drives operable to maintain data as immutable with Write Once, Read Many (WORM) controls, each removable disk drive comprising: a data cartridge case; a connector; and an embedded memory, the embedded memory physically attached to the data cartridge case and electrically connected to the connector, the embedded memory comprising: one or more memory blocks operable for storing immutable archival data; one or more headers, each header storing one or more items of metadata associated with the one or more memory blocks; and one or more gaps, each gap comprising: a re-writable block of data between one of the one or more headers and one of the one or more memory blocks; and one or more address of the one or more memory blocks; and a modular drive bay, the modular drive bay comprising: two or more drive ports, each drive port including a data cartridge connector which mates with the connector to communicate with the embedded memory; and a hardware/firmware, the hardware/firmware in communication with one or more application servers, the hardware/firmware receiving write requests associated with archival data from the one or more application servers, the hardware/firmware operable to store the archival data to one or more unused memory blocks in the embedded memory without overwriting existing data.