Patent ID: 7308512

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a disk drive housing defining a volume large enough to include an ATA disk drive therein, said disk drive housing having a form factor and electrical interface compatible with a fiber channel disk drive housing; an adaptor in said housing, said adaptor including an ATA disk drive coupling element and at least two fiber channel backplane coupling elements; a programmable switch coupled to said fiber channel backplane coupling elements to control selection of one of at least two paths, wherein at least one of said at least two paths is connected to one of said fiber channel backplane coupling elements, wherein the ATA disk drive is coupled to a fiber channel backplane via a selected one of the at least two paths without physically removing the ATA disk drive from the disk drive housing; a serial-to-parallel converter in a first one of the at least two paths, said serial-to-parallel converter being within said disk drive housing and coupled to said ATA disk drive coupling element, wherein said serial-to-parallel converter is capable of receiving a set of serial ATA disk drive signals from a serial ATA disk operatively coupled to said ATA disk drive and emitting a set of parallel ATA disk drive signals; and a parallel-to-serial converter in a second one of the at least two paths, said parallel-to-serial converter being within said disk drive housing and coupled to said ATA disk drive coupling element, wherein said parallel-to-serial converter is capable of receiving a set of parallel ATA disk drive signals from a parallel ATA disk operatively coupled to said ATA disk drive and emitting a set of serial ATA disk drive signals.