Patent ID: 7979773

Claim:
In a redundant array of independent disks (RAID), a system for initializing a RAID array, the system comprising: a RAID array, each disk drive having an interface to transceive storage data and read/write instructions; a RAID controller including: a RAID array auto initialization (RAAI) memory including a bin access table (BAT) for storing a record of host write activity; a plurality of disk controllers, each disk controller having an interface connected to a corresponding disk drive interface; a microprocessor having an interface connected to the plurality of disk controllers to transceive data and to provide disk access instructions, the microprocessor having a host interface to transceive storage data and a RAAI memory interface; and, wherein the microprocessor accesses the BAT to monitor a first group of bins in the RAID array to which write operations have occurred while the array is online, and a second group of bins to which write operations have not occurred while the array is online, the microprocessor directing the disk drive controllers to initialize the first group of bins using a parity reconstruction process, and to initialize the second group of bins using a zeroing process.