1. A method of operating a computer system having a non-volatile memory and a long-term storage medium, comprising: utilizing a first portion of said non-volatile memory as a mapped portion, said mapped portion used exclusively by a single operating system and the operating system assumes direct control of said first portion of the non-volatile memory, wherein a specific set of logical sector addresses of the long-term storage medium are mapped onto the non-volatile memory mapped portion, wherein reads and writes to the specific set of logical sector addresses access the non-volatile memory; utilizing a second portion of said non-volatile memory as a combination of read cache and write buffer for intermediate storage of data under direct control of a storage unit controller, wherein portions of said non-volatile memory not under direct control of the operating system are under direct control of said storage unit controller, wherein write operations to said long-term storage medium overwrite read cache areas in the second portion until the write buffer is flushed to the long-term storage medium, and wherein if data for a read operation is not present in the read cache area, then the data for the read operation is acquired directly from the long-term storage medium wherein the non-volatile memory is bypassed; and providing an interface for requesting that data written to said write buffer be transferred to said long-term storage medium.