US 12,292,806 B2
Testing drives in a redundant array of independent disks (raid)
Daniel S. Critchley, Winchester (GB); Roderick Guy Charles Moore, Bournemouth (GB); Tim McCarthy, Eastleigh (GB); and Jonathan William Lewis Short, Eastleigh (GB)
Assigned to INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed by INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed on Feb. 9, 2023, as Appl. No. 18/166,573.
Prior Publication US 2024/0273000 A1, Aug. 15, 2024
Int. Cl. G06F 11/00 (2006.01); G06F 11/10 (2006.01); G06F 11/263 (2006.01)
CPC G06F 11/2635 (2013.01) [G06F 11/1076 (2013.01); G06F 2201/81 (2013.01)] 18 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A computer-implemented method for testing drives in a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) array, the method comprising:
mirroring data from a selected drive to be tested in a RAID array, to spare storage space in the RAID array; and
once the data is successfully mirrored, performing preemptive failure testing on the selected drive to identify a preemptive failure of the selected drive, by:
causing the selected drive to enter a predetermined operating state correlated with a testing environment, the predetermined operating state being configured to force the selected drive to experience a preemptive failure,
monitoring the selected drive for any hardware and/or software errors while in the predetermined operating state, and
in response to detecting one or more hardware and/or software errors, causing the selected drive to fail the preemptive failure test.