Emc Corporation

Alton Gill

Edgar J St Pierre

Madhav Mutalik

John J Wallace

Method and apparatus for backup in restoring data on a computer system are disclosed. Backups may include a differential backup. In a differential backup, only some (but not all) segments of data in a primary copy are backed up. The segments may correspond to physical segments of storage in a storage system, rather than logical level segments of storage. The method and apparatus may include constructing a complete copy of a backed up element from an earlier fill backup and a subsequent differential backup.

Method and apparatus for differential backup in a computer storage system

Method and apparatus for backing up and restoring data in a computer storage system are disclosed. Data segments are backed up before they are updated. The segments may correspond to physical segments of storage in the computer system. Restoration may proceed by determining which segments have changed since a target time, and retrieving the data backed up from that time. The backups may be stored as differential backups&mdash;saving only segments of data that are about to be changed.

Method and apparatus for backing up data before updating the data and for restoring from the backups

Method and apparatus for backing up and restoring data in a computer storage system are disclosed. Changes to segments of memory in a primary copy are tracked. The segments may correspond to how the data is physically stored. Restoration may proceed by returning only those segments that are changed in the primary copy to their state at previous point in time. The backup used for the previous point in time may be a full system backup or a differential backup. A differential backup is one that backs up some segments of memory, but not all of the segments of memory in an element being backed up.

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Harvard, MA, United States of America

Alton Gill