This paper describes a way to efficiently utilize free disk space on Desktop machines connected over a network. In many Networks today, the local disks of a client node are only used sporadically. This is an attempt to manage the data storages in a network efficiently and to provide the software support for sharing of disk space on Desktop machines in LAN. In the current situation, storage expansion on conventional servers has constraints like, maximum expansion limitation, costly affair and in case of hardware replacement, up gradation, the manual relocation of Data becomes messy. UVS (Unified Virtual Storage) is an attempt to efficiently utilize freely available disk space on Desktop machines connected over a network. Its purpose is to reduce load of data traffic on network server, to efficiently utilize space on client nodes thereby avoiding wastage of space. It also eliminates Hardware restriction for Storage Expansion and provides Location transparency of data store. The main advantage of UVS is that it can be seamlessly integrated into the existing infrastructure (Local Area Network system). Virtual Storage is virtually infinite supporting scalable architecture. The client node can use the Unified Virtual Drive as a single point access for Distributed Storage across different servers thereby eliminating an individual addressing of the servers. The performance of prototype implemented on a UVS Server connected by network and performance is better than the centralized system and that the overhead of the framework is moderate even during high load.

Local Area Network Location Transparency Centralized system Distributed Storage Scalable Architecture