One embodiment of the present invention provides a distributed file system that is able to use direct connections between clients and disks to perform file system operations. Upon receiving a request at a client to access a file, the client performs a lookup in a local cache to determine what physical disk blocks are associated with the request. If the lookup cannot be satisfied from the local cache, the client forwards the request to a server. In response to the forwarded request, the client receives a block map for the file from the server. This block map includes location information specifying physical disk blocks containing the file. The client uses this block map to determine which physical disk blocks are involved in the request and then accesses the file directly from the disk without going through the server.