One embodiment of the present invention provides a universal storage bus adaptor that can interface a host computer's bus to any of multiple types of storage devices. The universal serial bus adaptor provides transport layer functionality in such a way that a separate transport layer does not have to be provided for each type of storage device. Anther embodiment of the present invention includes a file management system (or storage stack) that has a read/write chimney configured to enable a READ/WRITE operation to bypass the exception processing and management functionalities of the file management system. Bypassing these functionalities increases the processing efficiency of READ/WRITE operations.