Patent ID: 8209515

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: an interface to a storage device having a plurality of storage locations accessible using logical block names; a storage controller configured to determine a level of performance for the plurality of storage locations and to partition the plurality of storage locations into a plurality of regions as determined by their different levels of performance; the storage controller determining the different levels of performance by scanning the storage locations, and specifically by performing experimental read and write operations to determine the different levels of performance from experimental data collected in the experimental read and write operations; the storage controller further mapping the partitioned regions of the storage locations and aggregate the logical block names of the storage locations in the partitioned regions having an identical level of performance to a selected logical block name space; and a RAID controller, for assigning a first RAID level configuration to a first set of aggregated logical block names of the storage device, and assigning a second RAID level configuration to a second set of aggregated logical block names of the storage device, the first and second RAID level configurations being different from each other.