Patent ID: 7543110

Claim:
A method for effecting a partial-stripe update in a RAID system using only a single stripe buffer where the disk storage array is coupled to a host bus via a disk array controller, the method comprising the steps of: writing at least one segment of updated data from the host bus into the stripe buffer; determining which segments of the stripe buffer contain updated data from the host bus; reading from the disk storage array a full stripe of stored data associated with the updated data; overwriting the stripe buffer with the stored data read from the disk storage array but only in the segments of the stripe buffer that do not contain updated data from the host bus; and writing the stripe buffer contents to the disk storage array, thereby obviating the need for additional read and write operations to store the updated data into the disk storage array; wherein the writing the stripe buffer contents to the disk storage array is postponed for allowing additional updated data to be written to additional segments of the stripe buffer from the host bus.