A system and method for efficiently starting up a plurality of solid-state storage devices. A computing system includes one or more storage devices storing data in multiple allocation units (AUs). In a boot region, a data storage controller maintains an AU management set that identifies a state of various AUs in the system. In various embodiments, the management set includes an identification of a subset of free AUs, transitional AU, unincorporated AUs, and speculative AUs. At various times, information corresponding to the AU management set is stored to non-volatile storage. During a boot sequence, the AU management set information is accessed and the identified AUs are searched to identify allocated AUs rather than performing a search of all of the AUs in the system.