Patent ID: 8832368

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, by a storage system, a notification that a mass storage device has been added to an array of mass storage devices coupled to the storage system, wherein the storage system is one of a plurality of storage systems; reading header information in the mass storage device to determine a format of the mass storage device; and if the mass storage device has a first format, virtually slicing the mass storage device into a plurality of slices, wherein each of the plurality of slices comprises a table of contents, a RAID label, and an ownership region, wherein the table of contents contains an address offset identifying a slice location, wherein the RAID label contains identifiers for other slices that belong to a same RAID group as the containing slice, and information describing where the slices fit in an address range of an aggregate of the same RAID group, wherein the ownership region specifies a node that owns the slice, and wherein at least two of the plurality of slices on the mass storage device are assigned to different storage systems.