Patent ID: 8453036

Claim:
A method, comprising: upon receiving a request to resize an original array of mass storage devices, generating a declustered organization layout for data blocks in the resized array of mass storage devices by determining a data block from a first mass storage device in the original array to move, wherein the request to resize the array comprises a request to add a new mass storage device to the array; storing the declustered organization layout as a data structure in memory of a storage server; and configuring, by the storage server, the resized array of mass storage devices according to the declustered organization layout by moving the determined data block from the first mass storage device to a second mass storage device in the resized array, and wherein configuring the resized array further comprises: moving data blocks from the mass storage devices previously in array to the new mass storage device, wherein during said moving, a reconstruction load is evenly balanced across the array of mass storage devices, and wherein no two blocks in a same parity group are on a same mass storage device in the array, and a total number of blocks moved from the mass storage devices previously in the array to the new mass storage device is minimized.