When recording packetized real-time streaming data, e.g. multimedia data,
it is in general not possible to know in advance the size of the data
stream, and thus the required storage area. Therefore the storage device
may be full before the data stream is completely stored. The disclosed
method for storing and retrieving the remaining part of the data stream
on another storage device uses metadata tags (10,11) and data buffers
(IB1,IB2) to split a data stream seamlessly into chunks while recording
it, and distribute the chunks in real-time to different connected storage
devices (D1,D2), so that the chunks can be seamlessly concatenated again
in real-time for replaying the stream. The metadata tags (10,11) contain
identifiers for the successive storage node (N2) and/or the preceding
storage node (N1) and for the last stored application packet.