Patent ID: 7428594

Claim:
A file server system comprising: a plurality of hard disk drives communicatively coupled with a plurality of clients via a network, each hard disk drive in the plurality of hard disk drives including authentication information identifying one or more devices on the network that are permitted to directly communicate with said each hard disk drive; and a file control unit communicatively coupled with a plurality of hard disk drives and the plurality of clients via the network, wherein the file control unit accepts requests from said plurality of clients to access said plurality of hard disk drives, thereby managing data input and output of said plurality of hard disk drives, wherein said file control unit includes configuration information identifying one or more of said plurality of hard disk drives, and wherein the file control unit is configured to: broadcast a hard disk drive search message to the plurality of hard disk drives via said network at each initialization of the file control unit, in response to the hard disk drive search message, receive from a hard disk drive, in the plurality of hard disk drives, ID information identifying the hard disk drive to said file control unit, if the ID information is found in the configuration information of the file control unit, send to the hard disk drive a command to establish an entry in the authentication information of the hard disk drive, wherein the entry prevents the hard disk drive from directly communicating with devices on said network other than said file control unit, and wherein the authentication information for each said hard disk drive includes an ownership flag identifying a device on the network as an owner of said each hard disk drive, and wherein the owner is permitted to modify the authentication information of said each hard disk drive.