Patent ID: 7512736

Claim:
A method for adaptively configuring a set of disk drives, which initially implements an original RAID array including RAID 1 data, to implement a reconfigured RAID array that includes, at least in part, RAID 5 data, the method comprising: selecting a first RAID type based on a first number of disk drives having available storage space; determining a first maximum partition size for defining a first RAID volume of the first RAID type based on the maximum amount of storage available on any of the first number of disk drives; applying a partition of the first maximum partition size to each of the first number of disk drives to define the first RAID volume of the first RAID type, wherein the first number of disk drives is greater than two, and the first RAID type is a RAID 5 type, only one partition of the first RAID type is applied to each of the disk drives in the first number of disk drives; migrating the RAID 1 data associated with each of the disk drives included in the first number of disk drives to the first RAID volume by converting the RAID 1 data to RAID 5 data; determining that a second number of disk drives has available storage space, the second number of disk drives including one or more, but less than, all of the first number of disk drives; selecting a second RAID type based on the second number of disk drives; determining a second maximum partition size for defining a second RAID volume of the second RAID type for each disk drive in the second number of drives; and applying a partition of the second maximum partition size to each of the second number of disk drives to define the second RAID volume of the second RAID type, wherein the second number of disk drives is equal to or greater than two, the second RAID type is a RAID 1 type, and each of the first and second maximum partition size is the largest amount of available storage space common to all disk drives having available storage space for the respective RAID type.