Abstract: A new drive installation to a multiple drive, drive group begins with a start command issued by the drive group controller to a new drive. The command is then propagated to every other drive. A successful completion reply is propagated back to the first drive and then to the controller. The controller transfers managing control to the new drive and the new drive reads the first data segment it needs; i.e., in a sixth drive addition to a five drive group, this is data segment six on drive one. The segment read by the new drive (drive six) is placed in the segment stack on the first drive (segment six of Drive 1 is read and Drive 1 places segment six on its segment stack). The process is repeated with each drive in the RAID device, in order. All drives consider their segment stack to determine if they have locations to read. As a segment is read on a drive, the segment is placed into the drive's segment stack and removed from the source drive as the segment is written to the target drive.