Patent ID: 8595253

Claim:
A data archiving system comprising: a plurality of network storage systems, each network storage system comprising: a plurality of removable drives, each removable drive comprising a data cartridge and memory operable to store archival data; a plurality of drive ports, each drive port including a data cartridge connector configured to mate with one of the removable drives, the drive ports configured to receive the archival data from a plurality of application servers and send the archival data to the memory for storage; and an archiving system appliance configured to manage storage of the archival data on the removable drives, wherein the archiving system appliance operates the removable drives as multiple independent file systems specific to and concurrently accessible by the application servers; wherein each network storage system is configured to send requests for actions to one or more others of the network storage systems for processing the archival data stored thereon, and to respond to such requests from the other network storage systems.