Patent ID: 7647358

Claim:
A computing device, comprising: a storage device, the storage device including storage space divided into sectors, the storage device being externally addressable on a per-sector basis; and a file system for storing and retrieving files on the storage device, the file system internally dividing each sector of the storage device into an equal number of equal-sized chunks and managing data within each sector on a per-chunk basis, the file system reading a chunk from or writing a chunk to the storage device by reading or writing the sector having the chunk, the file system dividing a file into a number of substantive file fragments of a predetermined minimum size, each substantive file fragment comprising file data, a number of null file fragments of a predetermined size, each null file fragment comprising replicable placeholder data, and a single remainder file fragment of a size smaller than the predetermined minimum size, the file system storing each of the number of substantive fragments and the single remainder file fragment non-contiguously by writing to the storage device and not storing each of the number of null file fragments, the file system generating a file header and storing the file header by writing to the storage device, the file header comprising file fragment locating information for each of the number of substantive file fragments and the single remainder file fragment, and a null reference for each of the number of null file fragments, and the file system writing file header locating information to a list of file locating information.