Technology is disclosed for performing background initialization on protection information enabled storage volumes or drives. In some embodiments, a storage controller generates multiple I/O requests for stripe segments of each drive (e.g., disk) of multiple drives of a RAID-based system (e.g., RAID-based disk array). The I/O requests are then sorted for each of the drives according to a pre-determined arrangement and initiated in parallel to the disks while enforcing the pre-determined arrangement. Sorting and issuing the I/O requests in the manner described herein can, for example, reduce drive head movement resulting in faster storage subsystem initialization.