Patent ID: 7036042

Claim:
A method for a storage component controller in a data storage system to isolate misbehaving devices in an arbitrated loop, the data storage system comprising at least two controller nodes and at least one storage component, the controller nodes coupling the storage component to a host device, the storage component comprising the storage component controller and disk drive sleds, the disk drive sleds comprising disk drives, the arbitrated loop comprising the host device and the storage component, the method comprising: determining if the arbitrated loop is down; if the arbitrated loop is down: removing the storage component from the arbitrated loop, wherein the storage component controller, the disk drive sleds, and the disk drives form an internal loop; determining if the internal loop is down; if the internal loop is down: bypassing the disk drive sleds and the disk drives from the internal loop; testing each of the disk drive sleds individually; if a disk drive sled is not responding properly, marking that disk drive sled as bad; if a disk drive sled is responding properly: testing each of the disk drives in that disk drive sled individually; if a disk drive in that disk drive sled is not responding properly, marking that disk drive as bad; adding back into the internal loop the disk drive sleds and the disk drives that are not marked as bad; adding the storage component back into the arbitrated loop so the internal loop rejoins the arbitrated loop.