Patent ID: 8255645

Claim:
A method of operating a computer system having a non-volatile memory and a long-term storage medium, the method comprising: defining, in said non-volatile memory, a mapped portion that is mapped to at least one logical sector address from the long-term storage medium, said at least one logical sector address selected for use by an operating system to access said mapped portion in said non-volatile memory; defining, in said non-volatile memory, a cache portion that is not under direct control of said operating system and is different than said mapped portion which is under exclusive and direct control of said operating system, said data stored in a first portion of said non-volatile memory, wherein said first portion is said mapped portion or said cache portion determining that data written to non-volatile memory is no longer required; and based on said determination, restricting the data so that there is no flushing of any portion of the data to the long-term storage medium.