Patent ID: 8732429

Claim:
An apparatus for preserving a deleted data volume, the apparatus comprising: a receiving module configured to receive a deletion command to delete a data volume managed by a storage controller, the data volume associated with one or more deletion parameters, the deletion parameters specifying that data of the data volume is to be preserved upon deletion of the data volume, a data retention time, and a data preservation priority; a reference module configured to reference the deletion parameters in response to the receiving module receiving the deletion command; a preservation module configured to preserve the data of the data volume prior to the storage controller deleting the data volume in response to the receiving module receiving the deletion command, the preservation module preserving the data of the data volume according to the deletion parameters received with a creation command that created the data volume, wherein the receiving module, the reference module, and the preservation module comprise one or more of hardware logic and executable code stored on a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium; a query receiving module configured to receive a query for the data volume from a host, wherein the host sends the query to determine that the data volume is available for retrieval; a group command receiving module configured to receive a group creation command from the host, the host sending the group creation command in response to determining that a logical volume group corresponding to the data volume has been deleted and is available for retrieval; and a group creation module configured to create a logical volume group for the deleted data volume in response to the group creation command receiving module receiving the group creation command from the host.