The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
May. 30, 2006
Filed:
Nov. 03, 2003
Alvis Lin, Taipei, TW;
Cheen Liao, Taipei, TW;
Alvis Lin, Taipei, TW;
Cheen Liao, Taipei, TW;
Synology Inc., Taipei, TW;
Abstract
A method for efficiently maintaining snapshot instances. To maintain the state of snapshot instances, the snapshot copies the data needed to be protected into free space on the same volume. In order to identify whether a block is free, a snapshot record is created for each block on a volume to record write operations on the block. With these snapshot records, the allocation status of blocks on a volume can quickly be identified. Free space allocation is then accomplished by allocating free space via the file-system provided interface and identifying it with snapshot records. With this mechanism, snapshot software can allocate free space to store snapshot metadata and 'copy-to-write' data dynamically.