A technique for repairing a RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) group in a data storage system following a failure of a disk drive in the RAID group includes identifying regions of the failed disk drive that supported unallocated storage extents and writing predetermined data to corresponding regions of the spare disk drive. Any reading of other disk drives in the RAID group may thus be limited only to those regions of the failed disk drive that supported allocated storage extents.