Patent ID: 7974950

Claim:
An article of manufacture comprising computer readable storage medium including code executed in communicate with a file system and to perform operations, the operations comprising: maintaining a backup image of backup files comprising backup copies of source files in the file system, wherein real time file system operations are performed with respect to the source files in the file system; applying a policy to the backup files in the backup image to determine backup files satisfying a policy criteria; preparing a list indicating the determined backup files satisfying the policy criteria; accessing the source files in the file system from which the determined backup files indicated in the list where copied; determining whether the accessed source files have changed subsequent to a creation of the backup image; applying the policy criteria to the accessed source files to determine accessed source files satisfying the policy criteria; wherein the policy is applied to the accessed source files that have changed subsequent to the creation of the backup image; and applying a deferred operation indicated in the applied policy to the determined accessed source files in the file system determined to satisfy the policy criteria, wherein the deferred operation is performed on the accessed source file in the file system in response to determining that the changed accessed source file satisfies the policy criteria and the deferred operation is not performed in response to determining that the changed accessed source file does not satisfy the policy criteria.