System and method for efficiently storing compressed data on a hard disk drive

摘要

A system and method for organizing compressed data on a storage disk to increase storage density. The method and system include a compressor for compressing a data block into a compressed data block, wherein N represents a compression ratio. The storage disk includes a first storage partition having N slots for storing compressed data, and a second storage partition also having N slots for storing overflow data. Each of the N slots in the first partition includes at least one address pointer for pointing to locations in the second partition. According to a further aspect of the system and method, if the compressed data block is less than or equal to 1/N of the data block size, then the compressed data block is stored in a first slot in the first storage partition. If the compressed data block is greater than 1/N of the data block size, then the first 1/N of the compressed data block is stored in the first slot in the first storage partition and a remainder of the compressed block is stored in one or more slots in the second storage partition. The address pointer in the first slot is then updated to point to the one or more slots in the second storage partition.