Patent ID: 7093089

Claim:
A method for storing data on a computer system, the computer system having volatile memory and non-volatile memory, the volatile memory comprising a volatile memory device, said method comprising: identifying a first portion of the volatile memory device that is being used to store data; identifying a second portion of the volatile memory device that is not being used to store data; and in response to an input corresponding to a power-off condition of the computer system, saving the data corresponding to the first portion of the volatile memory device in the non-volatile memory without saving the data corresponding to the second portion of the volatile memory device in the non-volatile memory identifying a third portion of the volatile memory that is being used to store data, a copy of the data corresponding to the third portion of the volatile memory also being stored in the non-volatile memory; and additionally saving the data corresponding to the third portion of the volatile memory in the non-volatile memory if the non-volatile memory has additional storage capacity remaining after allocating storage capacity for saving the data corresponding to the first portion of the volatile memory device; wherein a copy of the data corresponding to the first portion of the volatile memory device is not also stored in the non-volatile memory prior to the identifying step.