The automatic mapping of a set of physical drives to virtual drives is disclosed. Given a maximum set of n physical servers, S1-Sn, and a maximum set of m physical drives, D1-Dm, a mapping of a set of virtual drives, V1-Vn, to the physical drives D1-Dm, is created, assuming n and m are fixed and known, and one virtual drive is created per server. Physical drives of size Dsize are organized into a maximum of p “Stripe Sets” SS1-SSp, each Stripe Set containing an equal number of physical drives. Each virtual drive will have a size, Vsize=(m*Dsize)/n (rounded down to the nearest integer). Virtual drives are mapped sequentially to Stripe Sets, starting with V1 mapped to SS1. Successive virtual drives are mapped to Stripe Sets until all virtual drives have been mapped to a Stripe Set.