Patent ID: 7860837

Claim:
In a computer system having a computer-readable medium including a computer-executable program therein for performing a method of identifying a plurality of items of storage media associated with a dataset that spans the plurality of items of storage media when stored, the method comprising: writing to a first item of storage media a first portion of a dataset; writing to the first item of storage media a first media-based catalog identifying the contents of the first portion of the dataset, the first media-based catalog including identification of files of the dataset of the first portion and locations of the files of the first portion as stored on the first item of storage media; writing to a second item of storage media a second portion of the dataset, the second portion being a remaining portion of the dataset that has not yet been written to an item of storage media; and writing to the second item of storage media an identification of the first item of storage media, the first media-based catalog and a second media-based catalog identifying the contents of the second portion of the dataset, the second media-based catalog including identification of files of the dataset of the second portion and location of the files of the second portion as stored on the second item of storage media wherein each item of storage media that contains a portion of the dataset includes a media-based catalog for portions of the dataset that have already been written to an item of storage so that if an item of storage media containing a portion of the dataset is unavailable, portions of the dataset stored on available items of storage media can be recovered using the media-based catalog written to each available item of storage media and wherein the identification of the first item of storage media is a copy of a checksum of a first portion of contents contained on the first item of storage media.