METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DUAL PORTING A SINGLE PORT SERIAL ATA DISK DRIVE

摘要

A method and an apparatus for providing multiple ports to a single port device are provided. According to the present invention, single port devices that are incapable of communicating across a shared communication bus, and therefore require a point to point communication channel, may be interconnected to multiple hosts using a switch assembly. The switch assembly selectively establishes a communication path between a single host and a device. Additionally, the present invention provides a method and apparatus by which computer subsystems, such as RAID storage subsystems, may be implemented using inexpensive storage devices. Furthermore, the present invention provides a method and apparatus for providing a high reliability computer subsystem by configuring the subsystem such that no single active component failure will result in the failure of the entire subsystem.