initially to fig1 a system is shown generally designated 10 that illustrates one non limiting environment in which the present invention can be used in general the present invention is a system for managing a data cache that caches data from a slower memory for instance the present invention may be implemented in database systems such as db2 and oracle as well as raid based systems such as the present assignee 39 s u201c shark u201d system as well as other systems such as individual hard disk drives etc accordingly it is to be understood that while fig1 illustrates one non limiting implementation that has a u201c shark u201d architecture it is but representative of the environments that the present invention finds use thus the present invention may be implemented in a file system database system or other system that must allocate space for variable sized data objects in one intended embodiment the processor or processors computers of the present invention may be personal computers made by international business machines corporation ibm of armonk n y or any computers including computers sold under trademarks such as as400 with accompanying ibm network stations as shown one or more processors 12 may communicate with one or more host computers 14 through an array 16 of host adapters with associated connectors 18 also the processor or processors 12 may communicate with slower storage such as a raid configured disk storage system 20 through respective device adapters 22 the processors 12 may have respective non volatile storages nvs 24 for receiving communication from the other processor as well as a respective preferably solid state implemented data cache 26 one or both processors are programmed to execute the logic herein with respect to this logic the flow charts and pseudo code herein.