Patent ID: 7051050

Claim:
A method for restoring a single file to an active file system from a snapshot, the method comprising the steps of: determining a type of file; performing, in response to determining that the type of file is a file that is absent from the active file system, an empty file routine; performing, in response to determining that the type of file is a file that exists in the active file system and is a large file, a restore routine including a reconcilation process, the reconciliation process including the steps of, a. creating a twin inode, the twin inode including a copy of block pointers associated with the file in the active file system; b. creating a new inode associated with the file to be restored; c. performig a reconciliation of the block pointers included in the twin inode with a set of block pointers included in the snapshot; and performing, in response to determining that the type of file is a file that exists in the active file system and is small file, a conventional restore operation.