Patent ID: 7308463
Filing Date: 2007-12-11
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
1. An agent for providing requested information identifying physical storage locations in which a file on a storage device is stored, comprising: an application programming interface through which file identifying information corresponding to the file is provided to the agent and the requested information identifying the physical storage locations for the file corresponding to the file identifying information is provided by the agent; and an analyzer configured to receive file identifying information from the application programming interface and read one or more file data structures on the storage device to ascertain a starting logical block number and a number of logical blocks corresponding to the received file identifying information; a logical volume analyzer configured to receive a read request from the analyzer, wherein the read request specifies at least the starting logical block number and the number of logical blocks to read; and wherein the logical volume analyzer is further configured to transfer one or more logical blocks to the analyzer in response to the read request; wherein the analyzer is further configured to analyze the logical blocks received from the logical volume analyzer to ascertain the requested information identifying the physical storage locations on the storage device according to a file system that created the file data structures on the storage device.