Patent ID: 7734584

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving, at a first system, units of information targeted for storage at the first system, wherein each unit of information includes a reduced-size version of a file that corresponds to one of a plurality of full-sized versions of files distributively stored in other systems including a second systems having a network connection, wherein the reduced-size version of the file is a subset of data of a full-sized version of a corresponding file; storing the units of information in the first system; receiving at the first system a first request from a third system, the first request to be for a unit of information corresponding to a requested file stored in the second system and the first request to be independent of the second system's network connection, wherein receiving the first request for the unit of information is in response to the requested file stored in the second system being unavailable for transferring to the third system, the unit of information including a reduced size version of the requested file stored in the second system, the requested file stored in the second system being a full-sized version that is not available on the first system; transmitting the unit of information from the first system to the third system; receiving at the first system a second request from the third system, the second request to be for the requested file stored in the second system; detecting availability of the second system and availability of the requested file stored in the second system; the first system downloading the requested file from the second system for storage at the first system in response to the second system being detected as available; detecting a change in status of the third system from unavailable to available; and initiating a process to transfer the requested file from the first system to the third system in response to the third system being detected as available.