INITIALIZATION OF A STORAGE SYSTEM

A storage array comprised of a number of storage drives is provided with a controller to control zero initialization of the storage drives. The zero initialization involves writing zeros to all the storage drives in the array before user data or other information is written thereto. Each storage drive has a priority associated with accessing and using a bus subsystem that provides the communication link between the array of storage drives and the controller. A number of write operations are conducted during the zero initialization process to each storage drive in the array. A first write operation is performed by each storage drive before a second write operation is performed. Substantially equal usage of the bus subsystem by all the storage drives in the array is achieved in order to fully utilize the available bandwidth of the bus subsystem and reduce the time required to complete the zero initialization.