Patent ID: 9497028
Filing Date: 2016-11-15
CPC Classification: G06F,G11B,H04L,H04N

Claim Text:
1. A method of auditing a storage donor that stores a data block on behalf of a data owner in a distributed storage system, comprising: determining that the storage donor has been assigned a block of data for storage; generating an index for the block of data, the index indicating a plurality of sub-blocks of data and including a tree of nodes comprising a root node and a plurality of leaf nodes, wherein the root node references the block of data and each of the plurality of leaf nodes reference one sub-block; auditing the storage donor to determine if the storage donor is maintaining storage of the assigned block of data by: (a) identifying an audit path through the index, the audit path specifying a particular sub-block; (b) generating a hash value for the audit path through the index by hashing data of the nodes of the path through the index; (c) sending a query to the storage donor, the query identifying the particular sub-block; (d) receiving a query response comprising a response hash generated by the query donor based on the identification of the particular sub-block; and (e) comparing the hash value with the response hash to verifying the presence of the data block based on the audit information.