Patent attributes
Disclosed is a system and method for disk drive grouping in a multi-cell disk drive test system. A test platform includes a plurality of cells. Each cell is configured to receive and to provide communication with a disk drive. An automated loader/unloader is coupled to a test computer and is responsive to the test computer. The automated loader/unloader is configured to identify disk drives and to selectively load and unload disk drives into and out of the plurality of cells. Particularly, once the automated loader/unloader has identified a first disk drive, the test computer is configured to: determine a grouping criteria based upon the first disk drive; detect a subsequent disk drive having the same grouping criteria as the first disk drive; and cause the automated loader/unloader to load the subsequent disk drive into one of the plurality of cells.