Patent ID: 8621165

Claim:
A method for providing a volume image backup, comprising: accessing, using one or more processors, metadata, a changed block information, and mapping information, for at least one object of a source volume, wherein the source volume comprises a plurality of data blocks, the mapping information identifies at least one data block that stores at least a portion of the at least one object, the changed block information indicates one or more of the plurality of data blocks that have changed since a previous backup of the source volume, the metadata comprises information regarding a source file system hierarchy of the source volume, and the at least one object is selected from a plurality of objects that are arranged using the source file system hierarchy; allocating at least one image file for the at least one selected object; determining that the at least one object is changed in the source volume; in response to the determining, identifying the at least one data block, wherein the identifying is performed using the mapping information, and the identifying comprises comparing the mapping information with the changed block information to identify the at least one data block; configuring a destination file system hierarchy within the at least one image file using the metadata, wherein the destination file system hierarchy is configured to reflect the source file system hierarchy with respect to the at least one object; and initiating a write operation, wherein the write operation is configured to write a copy of the at least one data block for the at least one object in the at least one image file, the initiating is performed using the mapping information and in accordance with the destination file system hierarchy, a virtual file filter is configured to capture the write operation prior to applying the write operation to the at least one image file, and the virtual file filter is further configured to redirect the write operation to an incremental image file, wherein the incremental image file indicates changes to the at least one image file.