Patent ID: 7536584

Claim:
A serial-attached-SCSI (SAS) expander for facilitating communication between SAS devices, comprising: a plurality of SAS PHYs, for transceiving signals with the SAS devices on a corresponding plurality of SAS links coupled to said plurality of SAS PHYs; status registers, coupled to said plurality of SAS PHYs, configured to provide fault detection parameters concerning communications on said SAS links; and a microprocessor, coupled to said status registers, configured to: identify faulty communications on one of said SAS links based on said fault detection parameters provided by said status registers; disable a corresponding one of said plurality of SAS PHYs coupled to said one of said SAS links on which said microprocessor identified said faulty communications; detect that action was taken to correct the faulty communications, after the microprocessor disables the SAS PHY, wherein the SAS expander receives information from a SAS initiator that a user took the corrective action to detect that the action was taken to correct the faulty communications; and re-enable the SAS PHY, after the microprocessor detects that the action was taken to correct the faulty communications.