Patent ID: 8370574

Claim:
A cartridge storage system comprising: a storage array to store cartridges; cartridge drives; a movable cartridge access device; a plurality of peripheral devices to control remote access to the cartridges based on respective plural configuration data indicating which remote host computers are authorized to access the cartridges, each of the peripheral devices having memory to store a respective one of the plural configuration data, wherein each of the peripheral devices is configured to instruct the movable cartridge access device to retrieve a corresponding one of the cartridges from the storage array and load the corresponding cartridge in a respective one of the cartridge drives in response to a request from a remote host computer determined by the corresponding peripheral device, based on the respective configuration data, to be authorized to access the corresponding cartridge; a removable nonvolatile memory external to the peripheral devices and the cartridges, the removable nonvolatile memory to simultaneously store additional multiple configuration data based on respective ones of the plural configuration data, each of the additional multiple configuration data identifying the respective remote host computers authorized to access corresponding cartridges; and logic configured to update the additional multiple configuration data based on changes for respective ones of the plural configuration data and to reconfigure a replacement peripheral device of a respective one of the peripheral devices based upon a respective one of the stored additional multiple configuration data.