Patent ID: 8074017
Filing Date: 2011-12-06
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. An apparatus, comprising: an integrated circuit (IC) configured to control the operation of, and exchange commands and data with, a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) system, said IC is further configured to create at least one reserved partition on at least one volume of said RAID system and create a table to map data stored in at least one reserved partition to at least one intended volume address of at least one volume of said RAID system, said IC is further configured to write data associated with a RAID data write request into cache memory, write the data into at least one reserved partition and update said table to reflect data stored in said at least one reserved partition; wherein writing said data to cache memory and said reserved partition occurs in one disk I/O transaction; wherein said at least one reserved partition is at least as large as the memory capacity of said cache memory, and wherein said IC is further configured to demote data from said cache memory and to transfer data from said cache memory to one or more volumes of said RAID system according to a RAID level implemented by said RAID system, and to reuse the data space on said cache memory corresponding to the transferred data for additional data to be stored in said cache memory.