Patent ID: 8370681

Claim:
A system comprising: one or more hardware resources comprising: emulation logic configured to cause a backup utility to identify a remote device as being local to a client device; conversion logic configured to: (i) in response to an instruction from the backup utility to retain backup data, determine whether a format for the backup data used for local storage at the client device is compatible with a format used for storage at the remote device, and (ii) in response to determining that the formats are incompatible, translate the backup data from the format used for local storage at the client device to the format used for storage at the remote device; storage logic configured to cause the backup data to be retained on the remote device identified by the backup utility as being local; and error logic configured to (i) recognize an error associated with the remote device, (ii) identify an error message that corresponds to the recognized error, wherein the error message is in a format compatible with the remote device, and (iii) convert the error message to a format compatible with the client device to enable the client device to identify the converted error message as being local to the client device; wherein the conversion logic is further configured to translate the backup data from the format used for storage at the remote device to the format used for local storage at the client device when the client device is to be restored to a previous state using the backup data.