A system and method for responding to file system requests having file IDs comprising V, a volume identifier specifying the file system being accessed, and R, an integer, specifying the file within the file system being accessed. The system and method also include D disk elements, where D is greater than or equal to 1 and is an integer, a switching fabric connected to the D disk elements to route requests to a corresponding disk element, and N network elements connected to the switching fabric. Each network element has a mapping function that for every value of V, specifies one or more elements from the set D that store the data specified by volume V, where N is greater than or equal to 1 and is an integer and N+D is greater than or equal to 3.