The present teaching relates to method, system, medium, and implementations for storage management. A hash table is constructed, having an index file having one or more slots, each of which includes one or more buckets. Each bucket stores one or more types of records, including a direct record, an indirect record, and a forwarding record. A direct record stores data directly in a bucket of a slot of the index file. When a storage request is received related to some relevant data, the request is handled based on the constructed hash table.