Patent ID: 7373559

Claim:
A method for disk drive replacement in a power-managed RAID storage system having a plurality of disk drives that are powered-on at a time before data access and are otherwise powered-off, the method comprising: monitoring a factor relating to powering-on a particular disk drive in the plurality of disk drives; determining a manufacturer threshold for replacement of the particular disk drive, the manufacturer threshold specified by a manufacturer of the particular disk drive for the factor; determining a percentage threshold less than the manufacturer threshold specified by the manufacturer; predicting a time at which the particular disk drive will fail based on the percentage threshold as applied to the factor and based on a power management characteristic of the particular disk drive; powering on a replacement disk drive if it is powered off; and transferring data from the particular disk drive to the replacement disk drive if the predicted time is below the percentage threshold before failure of the particular disk drive; and using the replacement disk drive in place of the particular disk drive.