RESILIENT SOFTWARE-CONTROLLED REDUNDANT ARRAY OF INDEPENDENT DISKS (RAID)

摘要

Method and computer program product for identifying a primary disk storage medium that is higher in a boot order than a secondary disk storage medium in a software RAID, and testing for a hardware failure of the primary disk storage medium during the BIOS power-on self test. The boot order of the disk storage mediums in the software RAID is automatically changed to position the secondary disk storage medium in the RAID higher in the boot order than the primary disk storage medium in response to detecting a hardware failure in the primary disk storage medium. The operating system is then booted from the disk storage medium that is highest in the boot order. A hardware failure may be detected by reading and verifying a predetermined portion of the boot partition of the disk storage medium. Optionally, the predetermined portion of the boot partition may be less than the entire primary disk storage medium, but is preferably sufficient to allow loading of software RAID drivers for the primary and secondary disk storage mediums.