Patent ID: 7836249

Claim:
A storage system comprising: a plurality of disk drives for corresponding to a plurality of first paths; at least one controller which implements Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) processes on said disk drives; a host interface circuit, included in said controller, for being coupled to a network and for receiving data from a computer coupled to said network; a disk drive interface circuit, included in said controller, for transferring data sent from said computer to said disk drives via a plurality of second paths; and a plurality of switches external of said controller, wherein one of said switches is coupled to said controller by at least one of said second paths and is coupled to said disk drives by said first paths, thereby forming a point to point connection between said one of said switches and each of said disk drives, wherein the number of said second paths is less than the number of said first paths, wherein said disk drives store data sent from said computer through said one of said switches and each of said disk drives has an Identification (ID) number, wherein said controller sends data received from said computer to said one of said switches via a selected one of said second paths, and wherein said one of said switches conducts a switching between said first paths and said second paths in order to transfer data to a destination disk drive among said disk drives via one of said first paths in response to receiving data from said disk drive interface circuit included in said controller via the selected one of said second paths.