Using RAID to Power Self-Healing Arrays

Self-healing systems from a handful of data storage vendors come with the promise of little or no maintenance, and seek to proactively heal hard disk drives (HDDs) after a hard disk drive failure. In this expert tip article on SearchStorage.com, Mark Staimer highlights various approaches to using RAID technology in self-healing storage systems.

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"Panasas Inc.'s ActiveScan technology continuously monitors HDDs and their contents to detect problems. ActiveScan monitors data objects, RAID parity, disk media and the disk drive attributes. When a potential problem is detected, data is moved to spare blocks on the same disk. Future HDD failure is predicted through the use of HDD self-monitoring analysis and reporting technology (Smart) attribute statistical analysis, permitting action to be taken to protect data before a failure occurs. When an HDD failure is predicted, user-set policies facilitate pre-emptively migrating the data to other HDDs, which eliminates or mitigates the need for reconstruction."

Read the Full "How RAID Powers Self-Healing Arrays" Story at SearchStorage.com