Patent ID: 8176149

Claim:
A method comprising: in a computing network in which a primary computing system is remotely connected to a plurality of drives in a storage system, remotely monitoring, using storage management software executed on the primary computing system, the plurality of drives in the storage system to determine a failed state condition associated with a first drive from among said plurality of drives prior to the first drive being ejected from its casing, wherein the plurality of drives are located along side each other in a data center in a plurality of rows, such that each row comprises multitudes of drives, so that from a first viewing distance and angle outside the plurality of rows, a visual inspection of plurality of illumination units associated with said multitudes of drives is insufficient to alert a human operator of a failed condition of a first drive when looking through said multitudes of drives from among said plurality of rows; after the storage management software has detected the failed state condition associated with the first drive, ejecting the first drive in the storage system, in response to the storage management software issuing an eject command without the interaction of the human operator, wherein the first drive is held in a casing and the ejecting results in a substantial length of the first drive protruding from the casing to an extent that the first drive is ubiquitously noticeable to the human operator from among said multitudes of drives and rows from the first viewing distance and angle without the human operator relying on status of the plurality of the illumination units to detect said failed condition or the human operator having to physically enter the row of disks in which the disk having the failed condition is positioned.