Patent ID: 6952794

Claim:
A computer implemented method for automatic updating and rebuilding the RAID configuration and configured data or disk drives in a RAID configured system, wherein said method employs computer implemented procedures to operate a RAID controller in a computer system having a CPU and memory for executing the procedures, disk drives, and a multiple system peripheral bus, comprising: a) scanning all disk drive connected to multiple system peripheral bus of a computer system, b) detecting by the RAID controller newly added disk drives connected to the system peripheral bus at initiation and runtime that at least one disk drive was added to the RAID controller, c) distinguishing configured and un-configured disk drives in groups, d) resolving conflict, where conflicted disk drives have the same configured location, by determining the most appropriate location among the conflicted disk drives such that when one disk drive is disconnected from a system and the other disk drive is connected into the system to replace the disconnected drive by choosing the disk drive with higher undate counts as a valid disk drive, and treating the other as an un-configured disk drive, e) finding and selecting referenced disk drive in a RAID configuration when newly added disk drives are inserted into a configuration of the system peripheral bus by checking the referenced disk drives with the same physical location as the newly added disk drive if its size is large enough to rebuild RAID data to the newly added disk drive to start the rebuilding procedure, and if not, checking the other referenced disk drives, and finding one with enough space to rebuild RAID data to the newly added disk drives, f) copying the configuration information of the disk drive group to the newly added disk drives. g) rebuilding the RAID data into newly added disk drives according to RAID levels, and h) presenting to the host operating system the disk drive configuration information.