Patent ID: 8751765

Claim:
A computer system comprising: a server; and a storage system coupled to the server and configured to provide a logical volume to the server, the logical volume including a plurality of logical blocks, comprising: a plurality of disk drives, each of which includes a plurality of physical blocks; and a processor being configured to allocate one of the physical blocks to one of the logical blocks in response to a write request issued to the logical block; wherein, in response to a single initialization command in the write request, said single initialization command including information identifying a plurality of initialization target areas, each of which is configured to predetermined logical blocks of said plurality of logical blocks, an initialization process is carried out by a storage application in said server such that: 1) initial data is written into an area of one of the physical blocks allocated to first logical blocks of a first initialization target area of the plurality of initialization target areas; 2) the area of said one of said physical blocks is designated as a source; and 3) the area of said one of said physical blocks designated as the source is allocated to second logical blocks of a second initialization target area of the plurality of initialization target areas, different from the first logical blocks, which second logical blocks are configured to be written with the same data as the initial data while maintaining the allocation of the first logical blocks to the area of said one of said physical blocks.