Abstract: The present application provides a method and apparatus of operating a shingled magnetic recording device that comprises a random access zone in which data is randomly readable and writable and a sequential access zone in which data is only sequentially readable and writable, and the sequential access zone is logically split into a plurality of banks operated independent of each other and storing a mapping from logical block addresses to physical block addresses in the random access zone; storing, in each bank of the plurality of banks in the sequential access zone, a respective part of a mapping from physical block addresses to logical block addresses; and operating the shingled magnetic recording device based on the mapping from logical block addresses to physical block addresses and the mapping from physical block addresses to logical block addresses.

Abstract: Various embodiments of the present invention provide a method and apparatus for reusing a storage block of a file system. The file system is based on a thin provision storage configuration and shares a storage pool with a further file system. The method comprises detecting an unused storage block in a storage space of the file system in response to a predefined trigger event. The method further comprises in response to an unused storage block being detected in the storage space, providing the unused storage block to the storage pool for being reused. According to various embodiments of the present invention, effective utilization of the storage space of the storage pool is achieved.