Patent ID: 6889288

Claim:
A storage system comprising a storage controller, a cache memory, and data storage, wherein the storage controller is programmed to respond to a request to access a specified logical block of data in the data storage by accessing a logical block index to determine whether or not the specified logical block of data is in the cache memory, and when the logical block index indicates that the specified logical block of data is in the cache memory, to access the specified logical block of data in the cache memory, and when the logical block index indicates that the specified logical block of data is not in the cache memory, to access the specified logical block of data in the data storage, wherein the cache memory contains a multiplicity of logical blocks of data, and each of the multiplicity of logical blocks of data contained in the cache memory is organized as a respective linked list of list elements containing fragments of the data of said each of the multiplicity of logical blocks of data contained in the cache memory.