@matrixmadhan: Thanks a lot... I have used an almost similar approach from your script but slightly adapted for my own datasets. I will try timing both the approaches and will paste the result here.
And one more thing: I have found this really cool package called xjobs. Would you mind taking a look at it? It basically handles the master part from your logic and is very useful. Thought you might find some use out of it too. You can access it here:
xjobs
@shamrock: Again, thank you for clarifying the issue. I just didn't know if it was really RAID not JBOD because the CPU is spending 88% of its time waiting (taken from the mpstat command) which seemed really weird to me.
@bakunin: Thank You for the advice. I actually agree with you as that was my experience too. I switched to PERL after a really bad experience with awk. Blame it on my lack of expertise in them. Other than that, I am still using awk and sed whenever things can be done easily.