Patent ID: 8055839

Claim:
A method, comprising: maintaining, in a first computational device, an indicator to indicate an amount of space to be reserved at the end of a physical volume of a secondary storage that is coupled to the first computational device; maintaining, by a storage manager application implemented in the first computational device, a virtual logical volume having a plurality of segments created by the storage manager application, wherein the plurality of segments are stored at the beginning of the physical volume corresponding to the virtual logical volume, wherein space is reserved at the end of the physical volume corresponding to the virtual logical volume based on the amount of space already indicated by the indicator, and wherein the physical volume is a linear storage medium; subsequent to space being reserved at the end of the physical volume, receiving a request to write data, at the first computational device, from a second computational device, wherein the data requested to be written is to update contents of a selected segment of the plurality of segments of the virtual logical volume; and in response to receiving the request to write data, writing the data to the reserved space to create a new segment in the reserved space that is different from the selected segment, wherein both the new segment and the selected segment are retained in the physical volume, and wherein the selected segment is indicated as being expired.