Patent ID: 8108601

Claim:
A modular drive bay in a network storage system for archiving data, the modular drive bay comprising: two or more removable disk drives, the two or more removable disk drives operable to store archival data, each removable disk drive comprising: a data cartridge case; a connector; and an embedded memory, the embedded memory physically attached to the data cartridge case, the embedded memory electrically connected to the connector, the embedded memory operable to store archival data; two or more drive ports, each drive port including a data cartridge connector operable to mate with the connector of each of the two or more removable disk drives to communicate with the embedded memory of each of the two or more removable disk drives; and a switch, the switch configured to: receive a request for action, the request for action being at least one of a request for data storage or a request for data retrieval, the request comprising a first address associated with one of the two or more removable disk drives, extract the first address from the received request for action, read metadata from a metadata memory coupled to the switch, the metadata associating each of the two or more removable disk drives with one of the two or more drive ports, based on the read metadata, determine that one of the two or more drive ports is associated with the first address extracted from the received request for action, replace the first address of the request for action with an address of the one of the two or more drive ports determined to be associated with the extracted first address, and redirect the request to the one of the two or more drive ports determined to be associated with the extracted first address.