Patent ID: 7603533

Claim:
A method for data protection comprising: (a) mounting a virtual storage that combines a full access temporary storage and a local READ-only portion of a main storage, wherein the READ-only portion represents a protected area of the main storage that is frozen during a backup process, and wherein the temporary storage is initially empty and is written to incrementally; (b) generating a bitmap for blocks of the virtual storage; (c) redirecting virtual storage write requests to the temporary storage, wherein the redirection is performed on a block level, and providing an on-screen indicator, to the user, of the redirecting; (d) marking, in the bitmap, blocks of the virtual storage corresponding to blocks of the temporary storage that are being written to; (e) redirecting, to the READ-only portion, read requests for unmarked blocks; (f) redirecting, to the temporary storage, read requests for marked blocks; (g) upon an acceptance of a state of the virtual storage, merging the temporary storage with unmarked blocks of the READ-only portion of the main storage, to form an integral storage; and (h) upon a rejection of a state of the virtual storage, terminating the redirecting, wherein an initial state of the main storage is used by multiple operating systems.