Abstract: A method, apparatus and article of manufacture for hardware independent system level control of storage units in an array is disclosed. The method comprises the steps of scanning the array of storage devices to find available I/O paths, storing a list of available I/O paths to each storage device in a memory, receiving an I/O request directed at a virtual disk memory location, mapping the virtual disk memory location to a corresponding storage device, selecting an I/O path for the I/O request from the list of available I/O paths in stored in the memory, and transmitting the I/O request to the storage device over the selected I/O path. The apparatus comprises a virtual disk driver functionally coupled between the computer and the disk array with a core driver and a subordinate driver customized for storage device arrays from different hardware vendors. Selection of the subordinate driver is accomplished via a switch table stored in the computer memory.