Patent ID: 7912992

Claim:
A disk-drive automatic recognition/setting apparatus for a disk system including a controller, a disk drive, and an expander attached to the controller, the disk drive, or another expander, the apparatus comprising: an information requester issuing a request for obtaining information regarding a device attached to each attachment port of the expander; and a routing method reset request transmitter detecting based upon device type information in the information obtained, whether a type of a routing method of an attachment port of the expander is correctly set according to a type of device attached to the attachment port of the expander, and, if the type of the routing method is incorrectly set, transmitting to the expander a routing method reset request by a serial management protocol (SMP) command to correctly reset the incorrect type of the routing method of the attachment port to a correct routing method type for the type of device attached to the attachment port of the expander, wherein the transmitting of a frame of the SMP command for the resetting embeds routing method information to be changed based upon a detected routing method type error for a type of device attached to an attachment port of an expander, the embedded information including an identifier of a target attachment port for which a routing method type is to be changed and information for changing the routing method type of the target attachment port.