Patent ID: 7340576

Claim:
A data storage system, comprising: a plurality of disk drives that have write caching enabled such that write data cached by a disk drive but not yet committed to disk media may be lost if a disk drive power-on-reset event occurs; an array controller that controls the plurality of disk drives to provide storage services to a host, the array controller having a cache that stores write commands and associated write data received from the host, and having a processor that executes the write commands stored in the cache at least in part by sending the associated write data from the cache to the plurality of disk drives; wherein the array controller detects disk drive power-on-reset events based on communications with the disk drives, and is responsive to detection of a disk drive power-on-reset event during execution of a set of write commands stored in the cache of the array controller by re-executing the set of write commands to correct for a potential loss of data that was cached by a disk drive but not yet committed to disk media at a time of the power-on-reset event.