Patent ID: 7937369

Claim:
A method of performing data backup for a client, comprising: receiving, at a host other than the client, volume information including data indicating a physical data storage location of at least a part of a volume comprising one or more stored objects associated with the client; determining, at the host and based at least in part on the volume information received, a file system type of a client file system associated with the volume, the file system type being a non-native file system type which is not natively recognized by an operating system running on the host; using a file system parser on the host to parse the client file system associated with the volume to obtain file extent information, wherein: the file system parser includes a non-native file system parser configured to parse the non-native file system type which is not natively recognized by the operating system running on the host; and the file system parser is configured to parse the client file system associated with the volume to obtain file extent information including by: determining a location associated with the client to access based at least in part on (1) the determined file system type of the client file system and (2) the file system parser's knowledge of where the non-native file system type stores file system information for a volume; and accessing the determined location associated with the client to obtain file system information; determining at the host, based at least in part on the file extent information, stored object information for the stored object included in the volume, the stored object information including data associated with a physical data storage location of the stored object; and copying the stored object from the physical data storage location of the stored object to a backup storage in parallel with continued processing of volume information to determine stored object information for another stored object in the volume; wherein the stored object does not necessarily correspond to a contiguous range of physical storage space.