1. An article of manufacture for use in a computer system for striping file data across a plurality of attached disk storage devices, the computer system having means to write data to the disk storage devices, run time environment means, and means to cause execution of programs containing control statements that define file names in the run time environment means and containing object code including file open statements, said article of manufacture comprising a computer-readable storage medium having a computer program code embodied in said medium for causing the computer to: detect an execution of at least one of the file open statements in the object code; query the run time environment means for a definition of a preselected file name, and if the preselected file name has been defined in the run time environment means, cause the computer to: select a number (N), greater than one, of stripes if the preselected file name has been defined in the run time environment means, the number being derived from the preselected file name; and stripe file data associated with the detected file open statement by division of the file data into N blocks, and write the N blocks to N disk storage devices in parallel.