Patent ID: 7080201

Claim:
A storage system, comprising: a controller being coupled to at least one host computer and transferring data sent from said host computer to a plurality of storage regions; at least one data line being coupled to said controller and being used to relay data from/to said controller based on a serial interface which is a different type from a Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) interface; a plurality of SATA disk drives having some of said storage regions and each of said SATA disk drives having said serial interface and a converter, said converter being coupled to said data line and converting between said serial interface and said SATA interface; a plurality of another type of disk drives having some of said storage regions and each of said another type of disk drives having said serial interface, said another type of disk drives being of a different type from said SATA disk drives; a plurality of first disk drive units being coupled to said data line and each of said first disk drive units having one of said SATA disk drives; and a plurality of second disk drive units each having one of said another type of disk drives.