Patent ID: 8019733

Claim:
A method for servicing a file system, the method comprising: sending a customer a computer usable program code for generating a diagnostic file system from the file system, wherein the computer usable program code identifies a plurality of units of data in the file system; determines that a first unit of data in the plurality of units of data contains file system metadata; writes the file system metadata from the unit of data containing the file system metadata to the diagnostic file system, in response to determining that the first unit of data contains the file system metadata; determines that the first unit of data contains user data; and writes a sparse object to a diagnostic file, in response to a determining that the first unit of data contains the user data, wherein the diagnostic file is associated with the file system metadata; receiving the diagnostic file system from a customer; servicing the diagnostic file system to form a serviced file system; and returning the serviced file system to the customer.