Patent ID: 7441143

Claim:
A method of managing a storage apparatus comprising a controller and a drive case which is coupled to the controller and in which a plurality of units are mounted, each of the units including a plurality of drives and being demountable independently of each other, the method comprising steps of: displaying information indicating a plurality of unassigned drives among plural drives of the plurality of units mounted in the drive case on a management terminal coupled to the storage apparatus; selecting plural unassigned drives from the plurality of unassigned drives from the management terminal to create a new RAID group by using the plural unassigned drives selected; judging whether, without drives included in any one of the plurality of units, data of each RAID group of the new and currently configured RAID groups can be stored or generated by the rest of the plurality of drives; and providing a notice showing that the new RAID group cannot be created to the management terminal when data of at least one of the new and currently configured RAID groups cannot be stored or generated without any one of the plurality of units.