Hot spare reliability for storage arrays and storage networks

摘要

A method and apparatus for improving the reliability of hot spare disk drives in disk arrays and storage networks is provided. The invention analyzes commands issued to active disk drives in a disk array/storage network, and issues commands to the hot spare drives which attempt to emulate the track usage patterns of the active drives. The track usage patterns can be inferred from examining logical block addresses (LBA) of data stored to the active drives, and/or the ratio of read versus write commands issued to the disk drives. By emulating track usage patterns of the active drives, the spare drives have a roughly equivalent lubricant distribution to that of the active disk drives. This provides increased reliability when the hot spare drives are called into active service.