Abstract: Storage and access of compressed data via separately compressed and stored fixed size logical blocks. An original uncompressed data file is divided into fixed-size logical blocks and then separately compressed thus resulting in a compressed block of data of a generally known maximum size according to a compression ratio known in advance of the actual compression. After the uncompressed fixed-size logical block has been compressed into a maximum fixed-size logical block it is stored into space allocated to it. Furthermore, a table is built correlating the original uncompressed fixed-size logical block to the sectors allocated for each maximum fixed-size compressed logical block thus providing a mapping between the original uncompressed data file and the physical location on the storage device. Alternatively, because the compression ratio is known and because the size of the uncompressed fixed-size logical blocks is known, the resulting maximum size of the compressed logical blocks is generally known.