Patent ID: 8879100

Claim:
An image forming system comprising: a plurality of image forming devices; a first storage unit that stores, in a correlated manner, (1) user information for identifying a user and (2) device information indicating, of the plurality of image forming devices, a correlated image forming device to which image date of the user is to be stored; a transmitting device that transmits the image data to the correlated image forming device; a second storage unit that is provided in each of the image forming devices and that is configured to store the image data transmitted from the transmitting device; a receiving unit that is provided in each of the image forming devices and that is configured to receive an input of the user information; a first acquiring unit that is provided in each of the image forming devices and that is configured to acquire, from the correlated image forming device, the image data of the user; an image forming unit that is provided in each of the image forming devices and that is configured to form an image corresponding to the image data acquired by the first acquiring unit; a recording unit that is provided in each of the image forming devices and that records a usage count of an image forming device of the plurality of image forming devices that receives the input of the user information; a specifying unit that specifies, of the plurality of image forming devices, an image forming device other than the correlated image forming device and of which the usage count satisfies a condition; and an updating unit that updates the device information stored in the first storage unit so that the image forming device specified by the specifying unit and the user information are stored in a correlated manner, wherein after the updating unit has updated the device information, the transmitting device transmits image data corresponding to the user information to the image forming device specified by the specifying unit, and wherein after the updating unit has updated the device information, the first acquiring unit acquires the image data corresponding to the user information from the image forming device specified by the specifying unit.