to fig4 there is shown the operation of an exemplary drive after the drive enters the firmware propagation state box 400 illustrates the peer discover and gag step here the device scans for peers of the same drive family using generic scsi inquiry commands it then issues a u201c gag u201d command to idle peer devices to prevent host intervention during the afu process after this step is completed the automatic firmware update is initiated as shown in box 410 in one embodiment a conventional scsi write buffer command is used to upgrade the drives 39 firmware finally the drive is reconfigured 418 to its normal state for example by initiating a drive mode change whereupon it issues a drive self reset command see box 420 0022 fig5 is a flowchart illustrating one embodiment of the drive disabling process of the present invention with this process a u201c pack leader u201d drive can disable a bad drive so that it does not corrupt user data in one embodiment if a network attached device detects that it possesses some anomaly or defect it can send a request to the u201c pack leader u201d that it should not receive anymore media access commands alternately a pack leader or other attached device may have the capability to determine if a device has an anomaly or defect referring to fig5 at step 510 a defective drive detects that it possesses an anomaly or defect a step 520 the defective drive transmits a request to the u201c pack leader u201d once the u201c pack leader u201d receives this request the u201c pack leader u201d issues a command that sends the defective drive offline see step.