Patent ID: 8676809

Claim:
A method comprising: inspecting an incremental image and at least one portion of a file table associated with the incremental image, where the incremental image is an incremental point in time copy of a virtual volume, wherein the file table is located within the incremental image, the virtual volume stores a virtual machine operating system, and the incremental image comprises information regarding one or more changes in at least one file with respect to a base image or another incremental image; determining, from the at least one portion of the file table, whether all of the portions of a first file are contained solely within the incremental image at a file location or whether the portions of the first file are distributed among the file location in the incremental image and one or more other images; storing information identifying the file location in a catalog; and if the determining indicates that the portions of the first file are distributed among the file location in the incremental image and one or more other images, locating the portions of the first file in the incremental image and the one or more other images and restoring the portions of the first file from the incremental image and the one or more other images, otherwise, restoring the all of the portions of the first file from the incremental image.