Patent ID: 8595451

Claim:
A system, comprising: a storage control module of a storage system for storing a first portion of critical data and a second portion of critical data at an instruction of an operating system, wherein the storage control module is configured to communicatively couple at least to a first storage medium, a second storage medium, and an information handling device, the storage control module configured for managing cache data of the storage system; the first storage medium for storing the first portion of critical data, where the first portion of critical data is separated into data having different priority levels based upon at least one data utilization characteristic associated with a file system implemented by the storage control module, wherein the first storage medium comprises a cache storage medium including a plurality of least recently used (LRU) data structures and a list of free cache blocks, the plurality of LRU data structures at least including a first LRU data structure and a second LRU data structure, wherein each of the plurality of LRU data structures corresponds to a particular priority level of a plurality of priority levels; and the second storage medium coupled with the storage control module for storing the second portion of critical data, wherein the second storage medium has at least one characteristic of performance, reliability, or security, different from the first storage medium, wherein the storage control module is further configured for: receiving an instruction to store or access data of the storage system, the data being associated with a particular input/output (I/O) process of the information handling device; and caching at least a portion of the data in a particular least recently used data structure of the first storage medium based upon an externally assigned priority level of the particular I/O process and the priority level of the particular least recently used data structure of the first storage medium, and wherein the externally assigned priority level of the particular I/O process is assigned by a second operating system, of the information handling device, based upon a data utilization characteristic.