Patent ID: 7975100

Claim:
A method, comprising: maintaining, by a storage manager application implemented in a first computational device, a virtual logical volume that represents a plurality of segments of a linear storage medium of a secondary storage, wherein the plurality of segments comprise a first segment comprising header information, and a last segment comprising trailer information, wherein the virtual logical volume and the plurality of segments are created by the storage manager application; receiving a request for data, at the first computational device, from a second computational device; in response to receiving the request for the data, determining whether the first segment and the last segment are present in a cache storage; copying the first and the last segment from the linear storage medium to the cache storage, in response to determining that the first and the last segment are not present in the cache storage; and in response to copying the first and the last segment, moving, by the storage manager application, selected segments of the plurality of segments from the linear storage medium of the secondary storage to the cache storage, in anticipation that the requested data is included in the selected segments that are moved from the linear storage medium of the secondary storage to the cache storage, wherein the cache storage is incapable of storing at the same time all segments of the plurality of segments represented by the virtual logical volume.