New Data Storage Model for H1

The ep collider HERA and the H1 experiment, at DESY in Hamburg, are performing sub- stantial upgrades in the year 2000. To cope with the increased demands on data storage and data handling, the H1 computing and offline environment will undergo a major revision. Af- ter a discussion of the present system and its shortcomings, the new H1 data storage model will be presented. In the new scheme, data will be stored in a multi-level hierarchical storage system implemented in the ROOT framework. Important features of ROOT which led to this choice are discussed. Also, first preliminary benchmark results are presented.