Patent ID: 8234318

Claim:
A storage system comprising: a plurality of physical devices having different device characteristics from one another; and a computer connected to and accessing the plurality of physical devices, wherein the computer forms, in a kernel space, a device driver to operate the plurality of physical devices, and at least one logical file system comprised of at least two of the plurality of physical devices, and wherein the logical file system includes: a device characteristic acquiring means for acquiring, through the device driver, each of the device characteristics regarding the types of the physical devices configuring the file system when a file system modifying operation of the file system is performed wherein the types of the physical devices include at least two of a device for sequential access, a device for random access, and a device for WORM (Write Once Read Many); a device characteristic holding means for storing the device characteristics for the respective physical devices obtained by the device characteristic acquiring means; a file purpose interpreting means for interpreting a purpose and attribute of a file to register each device characteristic as a characteristic flag in file management information when a file operation for preparing the file management information of a file storing process is performed, wherein the purpose and attribute of the file includes information identifying an access type as being sequential, random, or WORM (Write Once Read Many); and a storage device decision means for deciding and determining one of the physical devices for storing the file on the basis of the characteristic flag of the file management information and information from the device characteristic holding means when a file operation for actually writing a file in the file storing process is performed, wherein the file system includes means for causing, when a file operation for preparing the file management information of the file storing process is performed, a user to designate a flag representing the device characteristic of the file as an argument of the file operation, and when the flag representing the device characteristic of the file is additionally written, the file purpose interpreting means operates to register the flag representing the device characteristic of the file as a characteristic flag in the file management information without interpreting the purpose and attribute of the file.