RAID stripe layout scheme

1. A RAID storage system comprising: an outer stripe size that is an integer multiple J of a product of an inner stripe size and a number of data disks in a RAID disk set where J is greater than one (1);

wherein the outer stripe size being a least common multiple of most common I/O sizes that will occur in a system comprising the RAID storage system;

wherein the inner stripe size describes how many bytes of data are stored on a data disk in a first RAID disk set before storing additional data on a next disk in the first RAID disk set;

wherein the outer stripe size describes how many bytes of data are stored on the first RAID disk set before storing additional data on a second RAID disk set such that when an amount of data to be stored is greater than the product of the inner stripe size and the number of data disks in the first RAID disk set, storage either wraps back to a first data disk of the first disk set if the amount of data to be stored is less than the outer stripe size or proceeds to a first disk of the second disk set if the amount of data to be stored is greater than the outer stripe size;

and wherein contiguous blocks of a data stream are stored on different data disks In the RAID disk set.

2. The RAID storage system of claim 1 , wherein the inner stripe size is one of 16 KB, 32 KB, and 64 KB.

3. The RAID storage system of claim 1 , wherein the inner stripe size equal to M times a system memory page size, where M is an integer greater than or equal to one (1).

4. A media server comprising:

a RAID storage system comprising a data layout comprising an outer stripe size that is an integer multiple J of a product of an inner stripe size and a number of data disks in a disk set of the RAID storage system, where J is greater than one (1);

logic to arrange logical I/O requests into disk I/O requests that result in contiguous reads, from each disk of the RAID disk set, of multiple blocks of data having the inner stripe size;

wherein the outer stripe size being a least common multiple of most common I/O sizes that will occur in a system comprising the RAID storage system;

wherein the inner stripe size describes how many bytes of data are stored on a data disk in a first RAID disk set before storing additional data on a next disk in the first RAID disk set;

wherein the outer stripe size describes how many bytes of data are stored on the first RAID disk set before storing additional data on a second RAID disk set such that when an amount of data to be stored is greater than the product of the inner stripe size and the number of data disks in the first RAID disk set, storage either wraps back to a first data disk of the first disk set if the amount of data to be stored is less than the outer stripe size or proceeds to a first disk of the second disk set if the amount of data to be stored is greater than the outer stripe size;

and wherein contiguous blocks of a data stream are stored on different disks of the RAID disk set.

5. The media server of claim 4 , wherein the logic to arrange logical I/O requests into disk I/O requests that result in contiguous reads, from each disk of the RAID disk set, of multiple blocks of data having the inner stripe size further comprises:

logic to arrange logical I/O requests into disk I/O requests that result in contiguous reads, from each disk of the RAID disk set, of multiple blocks of data having a system memory page size.

6. The media server of claim 4 , further comprising:

the RAID system storing multiple audio-video streams in blocks equal to the inner stripe size.