Patent ID: 7069380

Claim:
A method by which a storage system accesses a file in response to an access request, said storage system including a plurality of disks and a disk controller, said disk controller being coupled to said plurality of disks and controlling said plurality of disks, said access request being received from one of computers coupled to said storage system, said file being stored in said storage system, said method comprising the steps of: an index creation step for selecting, by said disk controller, a portion of contents of said file to be used as an index, this portion of the contents of said file being selected so as to contain a smaller amount of data than file attributes of said file and being searchable independently of said file attributes; an access-request reception step for receiving, by said disk controller, said access request from one of said computers, said access request including file-related information used for identifying a file; an index retrieval step for retrieving, by said disk controller, said index with said file-related information used as a key; a file access step for performing, by said disk controller, control so that said data in an identified file is accessed, if said file has been identified at said index retrieval step; and a file attributes retrieval step for retrieving, by said disk controller, said file attributes with said file-related information used as a key, if said file cannot be identified at said index retrieval step.