Patent ID: 7328307

Claim:
A method for improving the write performance of non-uniform access storage having a plurality of units of physical storage, each unit including a plurality of regions, said method comprising the steps of: maintaining mapping information for said plurality of units of physical storage, providing the association of logical blocks with physical blocks and providing an indication as to whether a physical block contained in the physical storage is allocated for use; receiving a plurality of write requests; assigning said plurality of write requests to unallocated physical storage in substantially sequential storage locations; writing data in response to said plurality of write requests into assigned grouping of substantially contiguous logical storage blocks; enabling subsequent reuse of any previously allocated physical storage associated with said plurality of write requests; and repeating said steps of assigning, writing and enabling for at least a further plurality of write requests; wherein the step of assigning includes the steps of selecting a region and determining whether the region exceeds a predetermined free space criteria computed based on the overall number of free blocks for all regions.