Patent ID: 7493314

Claim:
In a first computer system, a method of providing access to a file stored in a partition of a mass storage device of the first computer system, the method comprising the steps of: running a first computer operating system on the first computer system; employing a first file system having a file system table to manage the partition, wherein a second computer operating system cannot read the file system table of the first file system; receiving file system information for the file, wherein the file system information for the file comprises a physical address associated with a block; determining from the file system information whether to include at least a portion of the file system information in a file resource table, the file resource table associating a file marker for the file with a physical address of the file within the partition, and the file resource table is employed by a file system other than the first file system; and making the file resource table accessible to the second computer system running a second computer operating system, wherein the step of making the file resource table accessible comprises providing a pointer to the file resource table, and the file resource table is configured to be read by a file resource table reader being run on top of the second computer operating system.