Patent ID: 8112663

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a logically contiguous group of at least three drives, wherein each of the drives comprises (i) a first region configured to store compressed data of a previous drive, (ii) a second region configured to store uncompressed data of said drive, (iii) a third region configured to store compressed data of a next drive, (iv) a first port configured to transfer said uncompressed data to a drive controller, and (v) a second port configured to transfer said compressed data between said drives; a first loop connected to said next drive of said logically contiguous group; a second loop connected to said previous drive of said logically contiguous group; and a compression/decompression circuit configured to compress and decompress the compressed and uncompressed data stored on each of said drives prior to transferring said compressed data through said second port, wherein said uncompressed data for one of said drives is stored as compressed data on at least two other of said drives.