Patent ID: 7831560

Claim:
A computer implemented method comprising: executing, on a processor, a snapshot-aware secure delete application, wherein said executing comprises: accessing each file snapshot associated with a file on a computer system, wherein said each file snapshot includes one or more file extents identifying raw data associated with said each file snapshot; identifying each non-duplicate file extent of said one or more file extents to obtain the non-duplicate file extents for a base version of the file and the non-duplicate file extents representing changes to the base version of the file; securely overwriting said raw data identified by said each non-duplicate file extent, wherein said securely overwriting said raw data identified by each said non-duplicate file extent comprises: securely overwriting raw data representing the base version of said file; and securely overwriting raw data representing the changes to said base version of the file; and deleting said each file snapshot associated with said file on said computer system.