Abstract: The disclosed technology relates determining a first subset of a plurality drives having a first zone size and a second subset of the plurality of drives having a second zone size different from the first zone size, within a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) group. A prevailing zone size between the first zone size and the second zone size is determined. One or more logical zones within the determined first subset of the plurality of drives and the determined second subset of the plurality of drives for a received input-output operation is reserved based on the determined prevailing zone size.

Abstract: The disclosed technology relates to managing input-output operation in a zoned storage system includes identifying a first physical zone and a second physical zone within a zoned namespace solid-state drive associated with a logical zone to perform a received write operation. Data to be written in the received write operation is temporarily staged in a zone random write area associated with the identified second physical zone. Based a storage threshold of the zone random write area, a determination is made regarding when to transfer temporarily staged data to be written area to the identified second physical zone. When the storage threshold of the zone random write area determined to have exceeded, temporarily staged data to be written is transferred to the identified second physical zone.