Patent ID: 7908302

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: splitting an original file comprising first and second file data storage blocks, said splitting comprising: creating a first new file data structure corresponding to a first new file and a second new file data structure corresponding to a second new file, wherein the first new file data structure comprises a plurality of pointers to respective file data storage blocks of the original file, coupling the first and second new file data structures to the respective first and second file data storage blocks of the original file, wherein the first and second file data storage blocks are not replicated during said coupling, and the original file comprises the original file data structure and data written to the first and second file data storage blocks on a file system memory space, generating a first pointer of the plurality of pointers to the first file data storage block of the original file, and storing the first and second new files on a memory device managed by a file system, wherein the creating, the coupling, and the storing are performed by a processor implementing the file system; and merging the first and second new file data structures, wherein the merging comprises: coupling a merge file data structure to the first and second file data storage blocks, generating a first merge pointer to the first file data storage block, generating a second merge pointer to the second file data storage block, and including the first and second merge pointers in the merge file data structure.