Patent ID: 7644304

Claim:
A method for detecting and replacing a failed serial attached SCSI (SAS) hard disk drive of a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) set in an information handling system having a SAS zoning expander, said method comprising the steps of: detecting a failure of a SAS hard disk drive of a RAID set with a RAID controller; notifying a SCSI enclosure processor (SEP) of the SAS hard disk drive failure, wherein the SEP is associated with a SAS zoning expander controlling access to a plurality of SAS zones and the failed SAS hard disk drive is assigned to one of the plurality of SAS zones; determining whether a SAS hot-spare hard disk drive is available in the SAS zone configured to contain SAS hot-spare hard disk drives, wherein if the SAS hot-spare hard disk drive is available then assigning the SAS hot-spare hard disk drive to the one of the plurality of SAS zones of the failed SAS hard disk drive; detecting the SAS hot-spare hard disk drive with the RAID controller; and rebuilding the RAID set with the SAS hot-spare hard disk drive.