METHOD FOR PERFORMING DISK ARRAY OPERATIONS USING A NONUNIFORM STRIPE SIZE MAPPING SCHEME

摘要

Method and apparatus for improving the capacity of a disc in a subsystem of a set of disks. A non-uniform topography system is used wherein the disk array comprises regions having variable size data bands. The stack of disks comprises a region consisting of data strips having a strip of dimension corresponding to the dimension of the internal data structures commonly used by the file system, in addition to a region composed of several bands of data having a dimension larger band than those used for general data storage. When a write operation involving one of the data structures takes place, the data structure is preferably topographiée on the small band region in the stack of disks having a size matching the size of the data structure . In this way, each time a file system data structure is updated, the operation is a write to a full band. This eliminates the disadvantage of write operations on partial band.