Abstract: A method, system, and computer program product are provided for implementing enhanced data storage in a removable media library to optimize performance and reliability. When two volumes are initially formatted, user specified affinity information is used to identify an affinity between a first volume and a second volume for storing data. A user specified affinity type value is defined by the user specified affinity information. The first volume to be formatted is selected from a first removable media library (RML) and formatted. The second volume to be formatted is selected based upon an identified user specified affinity type value.

Abstract: The present invention provides methods and systems for creating and manipulating universal disk format (UDF) data structures having variable amounts of data. For some embodiments, a UDF data structure is formatted with a freespace bitmap field large enough to represent a first amount of data and an area adjacent the freespace bitmap field reserved to allow the freespace bitmap field to expand to represent a second amount of data greater than the first amount of data. The freespace bitmap field may be expanded to represent the second amount of data by increasing a freespace bitmap size field to represent an expanded freespace bitmap field and initializing the expanded portion of the freespace bitmap size field.

Abstract: A method, apparatus and computer program product are provided for implementing autonomous variation of media dismount time in a robotic media library. I/O requests to the robotic media library are monitored. Performance statistics are gathered for the I/O requests to the robotic media library. The gathered performance statistics are periodically checked to determine if a change is needed for the media dismount time. The gathered performance statistics include a media hit count of where a data storage medium (DSM) for an I/O request is in a robotic media drive, and a media near miss count where the DSM for the I/O request is in transit from the robotic media drive.

Abstract: The present invention provides methods and systems for creating and manipulating universal disk format (UDF) data structures having variable amounts of data. For some embodiments, a UDF data structure is formatted with a freespace bitmap field large enough to represent a first amount of data and an area adjacent the freespace bitmap field reserved to allow the freespace bitmap field to expand to represent a second amount of data greater than the first amount of data. The freespace bitmap field may be expanded to represent the second amount of data by increasing a freespace bitmap size field to represent an expanded freespace bitmap field and initializing the expanded portion of the freespace bitmap size field.