Alignment-unit-based virtual formatting methods and devices employing the methods

摘要: In various embodiments, the present invention provides virtual disk formatting by intermediate devices including: (1) a storage shelf router and in which storage-shelf is included, to external computing entities, such as disk-array controllers host computers; (2) an I/O controller; (3) storage-bridge device. Additional embodiments of enhance using additional padding, dual-abstraction method, efficiently align virtual-block reads with underlying device blocks. Yet allow for tracking correcting blocks corrupted during READ-MODIFY operations that occur WRITE operations. Various may employ two or more formatting, dual abstraction, corrupted-device-block methods.