Patent ID: 8316263

Claim:
A method for improving disk drive failure prediction at a central processing facility, the method comprising: receiving a set of quality metric values and a failure indicator from one of a plurality of disk drives that are remote to the central processing facility; and evolving a disk failure prediction algorithm (DFPA) comprising a neural network to detect an impending failure of at least one of the remote disk drives, the evolving comprising: (a) applying a function to a set of primary quality metrics to generate a set of secondary quality metrics; (b) using a genetic algorithm to select a subset of the secondary quality metrics; (c) applying the quality metric values corresponding to the selected subset of secondary quality metrics to the neural network to generate an output indicative of the fitness of the secondary selected subset of secondary quality metrics to predict drive failure, the applying comprising: applying, to the inputs quality metric values, a process element function to generate the output; and comparing the output to a reference value based at least in part on the received set of quality metric values and failure indicator; and (d) repeating steps (b) and (c) at least once to determine a subset of secondary quality metrics to be used in the DFPA.