Patent ID: 8554996

Claim:
A storage system comprising: at least one storage device, wherein a plurality of data storage volumes are provided by the at least one storage device to store data, wherein a first of the plurality of data storage volumes is implemented with a data protection mechanism, and a second of the plurality of data storage volumes is implemented without the data protection mechanism, and wherein at least one extended storage volume initially un-allocated to any of the plurality of data storage volumes is also provided by the at least one storage device, wherein the at least one extended storage volume has a plurality of portions of different sizes; and a controller to, in response to usage of a particular one of the plurality of data storage volumes, dynamically allocate a portion of the extended storage volume to the particular data storage volume to dynamically expand storage capacity of the particular data storage volume, wherein the dynamically allocated portion of the extended storage volume is a dynamically selected one of the plurality of portions of different sizes, wherein the controller is to progressively select larger size portions of the extended storage volume with an increasing number of times that allocations of additional storage space are made to the particular data storage volume.