Apparatus and methods for controllably spinning up disk drives in a storage system. A storage system includes a first portion of disk drives that support controllable sequencing of disk drive spin-up and a second portion that do not support controllable sequencing of spin-up. Disk drives in the first portion are configured to be powered on with the storage system and are controllably spun up by issuing appropriate commands to each disk drive. Disk drives in the second portion are configured initially powered off when the storage system is powered on and have power controllably applied thereto to cause spin-up of each disk drive. Disk drives in the first portion may include SAS disk drives and SATA disk drives that support staggered spin-up features. Disk drives in the second portion may include SATA disk drives that do not support staggered spin-up.