Patent ID: 8495290

Claim:
A modular drive bay comprising: a plurality of removable drives operable to store archival data, each removable drive comprising: a data cartridge case; a connector coupled to the data cartridge case; and memory comprised within a data storage medium enclosed by the data cartridge case and in communication with the connector, the memory configured to store the archival data; a plurality of drive ports configured for insertion of the removable drives, each drive port including a data cartridge connector operable to mate with one of the removable drives in order to communicate with the memory therein; a datastore for metadata associating each of the removable drives with one of the drive ports; and a hardware/firmware switch connected to the datastore and configured to: receive a request for data storage or retrieval, the request including an address of one of the removable drives; extract the address from the request; read the datastore to determine which of the plurality of drive ports is associated with the address; replace the address extracted from the request with an address of the associated drive port; and redirect the request from the removable drive addressed in the request to the associated drive port, the addressed removable drive being inserted therein.