Patent · US Expired

Recovery from errors in a redundant array of disk drives

US5278838A · kind A · utility

131Cited by
6References
16Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateJun 18, 1991
Grant dateJan 11, 1994
Priority date
Expiry dateJun 18, 2011

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG11B20/1833
  • WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

Fault tolerance in a redundant array of disk drives is degraded when error conditions exist in the array. Several methods for rebuilding data of the array to remove the degradation are described. Data rebuilding for entire disk drives and partial data rebuilds of disk drives are described. All rebuild methods tend to reduce the negative affect of using array resources for the data rebuild. In one method rebuilding occurs during idle time of the array. In a second method rebuilding is interleaved between current data area accessing operations of the array at a rate which is inversely proportional to activity level of the array. In a third method, the data are rebuilt when a data area being accessed is a data area needing rebuilding.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.