Patent ID: 7620843

Claim:
A method for managing a data storage system, comprising: storing a first set of data and a second set of the data on a storage device in the data storage system; assigning a first restore preference level to the first set of the data and a second restore preference level to the second set of the data, the first restore preference level and the second restore preference level comprising respective restore preference levels, such that applying the first restore preference level to the first set and applying the second restore preference level to the second set rebuilds the first set before the second set irrespective of physical locations and logical addresses of the sets of the data on the storage device; receiving an indication of a failure in the storage device; in response to the indication, generating a command to rebuild the first set of the data as a first restored set of the data and the second set of the data as a second restored set of the data; and in response to the command, rebuilding the first set of the data and the second set of the data according to the respective restore preference levels, wherein rebuilding the first set before the second set comprises ensuring that at any time during rebuilding, an amount X of the first set of the data and an amount Y of the second set of the data have been processed, where a fraction X/Y is predefined by an operator of the storage system and where the fraction X/Y is greater than one.