APPARATUS, SYSTEM, AND METHOD FOR DATA STORAGE USING PROGRESSIVE RAID

摘要

An invention is disclosed for data storage with progressive RAID. A storage request receiver module (1702) receives a request to store data. A striping module (1704) calculates a stripe pattern for the data and each stripe includes N data segments. The striping module (1704) writes the N data segments to N storage devices (150). Each data segment is written to a separate storage device (150) within a set of storage devices (1604) assigned to the stripe. A parity-mirror module (1706) writes a set of N data segments to one or more parity-mirror storage devices (1602) within the set of storage devices. A parity progression module (1708) calculates a parity data segment on each parity-mirror device (1602) in response to a storage consolidation operation, and stores the parity data segments. The storage consolidation operation is conducted to recover storage space and/or data on a parity-mirror storage device (1602).