Patent ID: 8069321

Claim:
A method of generating a pool of data, comprising: automatically obtaining or identifying a primary pool of data, the primary pool of data including a primary seed and one or more generations of data, wherein each of the generations of data in the primary pool of data includes one or more data blocks that have changed with reference to a safeset corresponding to a previous backup, the safeset corresponding to the previous backup including the primary seed; and automatically generating a secondary pool of data; automatically transferring at least a portion of the data in the primary pool of data to the secondary pool of data such that the primary pool of data no longer includes the at least a portion of the data that has been transferred to the secondary pool of data, wherein the secondary pool of data includes a first seed and one or more generations of data; archiving the secondary pool of data to a storage medium; and restoring data for one of the generations of data in the secondary pool using the first seed, the generation of data, and generations of data in the secondary pool that have been received prior to the generation of data being restored.