Aspects of the invention are provided to support partial file caching on a file system block boundary. All read requests are converted so that offset and count are aligned on a block boundary. Data associated with read requests is first satisfied from local cache, with cache misses supported with a call to persistent or remote system. Similarly, for a write request, any partial blocks are aligned to the block boundary. Data associated with the write request is performed on local cache and placed in a queue for replay to the persistent or remote system.