Patent ID: 7979604

Claim:
A computerized data storage apparatus comprising: a plurality of storage devices; and a storage controller operable to provide a plurality of logical data volumes to at least one host computer for data access, wherein: said logical data volume is associated with a performance information, each of the plurality of storage devices includes a plurality of data areas and a queue associated to each of said plurality of data areas; each queue is associated to a logical data volume based on performance information, wherein a mapping information between said plurality of queues and said plurality of data areas is stored in said storage controller and updated dynamically according to said performance information, said logical data volume is allocated from multiple data areas of said plurality of data areas from said storage devices, wherein each data area of said data areas is allocated in response to a write request using said mapping information; wherein the storage devices of the storage apparatus store the data being provided to the host computer through the data volumes, and wherein the storage devices comprise a storage device memory for storing and executing: a response program for responding to a READ/WRITE command from the host computer; a performance partitioning program for adjusting request execution among data areas and a performance partitioning management program for configuring a performance partition management table and a performance partition status table: wherein the storage device memory stores: a performance partition management table including a logical block addressing range for each of the data areas and a performance table including performance information for the storage device; wherein a performance partition management table on each of the storage devices records a correspondence between each one of the data areas and one or more of the plurality of data areas, wherein a volume map table on the storage apparatus maps each of the data volumes to one or more of the storage devices, and wherein the data available from each of the data volumes is stored on the data areas on one or more of the hard disk drives; wherein the performance information comprises a data access length, a hard disk drive performance parameter and a partition performance parameter, and wherein the hard disk drive performance parameter and the partition performance parameter are determined based on a number of input/output operations per second.