Patent ID: 7516346

Claim:
A method of reducing power consumption in a redundant storage system, comprising: diverting read requests to a first subset of storage disks in the redundant storage system, so that a second subset of remaining storage disks in the redundant storage system can transition to a lower power mode until the second subset of remaining storage disks is needed to satisfy a write request, wherein all of the storage disks in the redundant storage system are dynamically assigned between the first and second subsets based on redundancy requirements and system load in the redundant storage system; detecting if the system load in the redundant storage system is high; and if the system load is high, adding one or more storage disks from the second subset of remaining storage disks to the first subset of storage disks in the redundant storage system so as to handle the system load; detecting if the system load in the redundant storage system is low; and if the system load is low, adding one or more storage disks from the first subset of storage disks to the second subset of remaining storage disks in the redundant storage system.