Methods for managing region lock in a storage controller are disclosed. Upon receiving in a hardware based region lock management circuit a data request, the region lock management circuit determines a lock type of a region lock specified in the data request and conditionally creates a region lock data structure, wherein the region lock data structure is conditionally created based on the type of the region lock requested. The region lock management circuit further determines whether the data request is requesting access to at least a portion of a locked data region and the lock type of the locked data region. If the data request is requesting access to at least a portion of the locked data region and the lock type of the locked data region permits firmware diversion, the region lock management circuit diverts the data request to a storage controller firmware processor for further processing.