The subject disclosure is directed towards one or more parallel storage components for parallelizing block-level input/output associated with remote file data. Based upon a mapping scheme, the file data is partitioned into a plurality of blocks in which each may be equal in size. A translator component of the parallel storage may determine a mapping between the plurality of blocks and a plurality of storage nodes such that at least a portion of the plurality of blocks is accessible in parallel. Such a mapping, for example, may place each block in a different storage node allowing the plurality of blocks to be retrieved simultaneously and in its entirety.