Appeal No. 2006-1540
Application No. 10/113,338
First, there must be rebuilding of stripe units in a disk in
a disk array stripe by stripe. As noted supra, stripe units were
known. Further, by the explanation at pages 3-5 of the instant
specification, it would appear that this is merely a recitation
of the well known “expansion” process. See page 4 of the
specification indicating that the process of copying back the
spare unit data onto the repaired or spare disk stripe by stripe
is known as “expansion.”
Then, the claim requires a received request to write data to
a “particular stripe unit” in “said disk” during the expansion
process. Ohizumi appears to describe a request to write data to
a disk, both a spare disk storage and a new disk storage, but
there is no indication in Ohizumi that the request is to write
data to a “particular stripe unit” in “said disk,” as required by
the claim. Clearly, Menon is no help in this regard. Ohizumi
appears to write all the data in a failed disk to both a spare
disk storage and a new disk storage, but does not write data to
“particular” stripe units in a disk.
Moreover, the claim requires an actual writing of the data
in the “particular stripe unit” in the disk “if said particular
stripe unit was rebuilt during said expansion process.” Nothing
in either Ohizumi or Menon describes any conditional writing of
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