Patent ID: 8656075

Claim:
For use with a block mode access storage protocol, a method of creating compressed data for storage in at least one storage logical unit, said method comprising: a) creating in respect to at least one storage logical unit a corresponding virtual logical unit accessible by said block mode access protocol and configured to virtually accommodate raw data, wherein a size of the virtual logical unit corresponds to an estimated size of raw data which, being compressed, would substantially amount to a size of the storage logical unit; b) segmenting the virtual logical unit into one or more virtual storage portions constituting clusters; c) compressing the raw data accommodated in a cluster and thereby generating compressed data to be stored in a respective compressed section within the storage logical unit, wherein the compressed section is divided into at least one fixed-size compression logical units (CLU) and the storage logical unit comprises a section table with at least one record describing a compressed section, said at least one record holding at least information on CLUs corresponding to the compressed section and storage location pointers pertaining to said CLUs; d) determining a serial number of a first compressed section comprising data to be updated thereby constituting an original compressed section (N o ); e) determining the CLUs corresponding to said original compressed section and storage location thereof by referring to the section table; f) restoring the data from said original compressed section; g) calculating an offset of the updating data within corresponding cluster; h) compressing the updated cluster into an updated compressed section (N u ); and i) overwriting said original compressed section with an updated compressed section.