Local storage systems for continuous data with heterogeneous timing requirements

Today's magnetic storage systems (hard disks) in the work-station area are trimmed for maximal overall speed without considering the needs of individual files. They are addressed on the track/head/sector level, which is usually a disk-internal translation of the more sophisticated real disk geometry. This paper introduces the structure of an operating system-independent storage system with file-level access. The system is scalable in size, and is designed to contain separate partitions or disks for short/long time storage and caching. The built-in microcontroller administrates the file system and performs access optimization and reordering in accordance with the real hard disk geometry. A set of new file attributes is defined to individualize the optimization process for continuous data. Algorithms for optimizing are discussed.