Patent ID: 8468136

Claim:
A method comprising: identifying an item for segmented backup according to one or more specified criteria, the criteria including a size of the item or a change frequency of the item; performing a first backup of the item using one or more computing devices, including: separating the item into a plurality of first parts prior to backing up the item, and separately storing each part, where separating the item into a plurality of first parts includes identifying first parts of the item to be separated according to a segmentation criteria, the segmentation criteria associated with a data structure of the item where the segmentation criteria is unrelated to an available number of storage devices, where separating the item into a plurality of first parts includes identifying the first parts according to functional areas of the data structure of the item; and performing a second backup of the item, including: identifying changed data in the item relative to the first backup; separating the changed data into a plurality of second parts; and storing the changed item data of the plurality of second parts without storing the unchanged data of the item.