Patent ID: 8230342

Claim:
A method of deleting a portion of data in a portable storage device, the data being in a first area of the portable storage device, the method comprising: generating positional information within the data identifying a portion of the data to be deleted, wherein the generation of positional information is based upon at least one time stamp inserted in the data to correspond to one or more respective defined portions of the data; storing the positional information and the portion of the data to be deleted in a second area of the portable storage device; and designating a storage portion of the first area of the portable storage device, storing the portion of the data to be deleted, as overwritable, wherein the designating of the storage portion of the first area as overwritable indicates that the portion of the data to be deleted, is still present in the storage portion of the first area, along with the at least one time stamp corresponding to the portion of the data to be deleted, until the storage portion of the first area is overwritten at another point in time, and wherein the data deleted from the first area of the portable storage device is restored when the portable storage device is accessed by a different disk drive or a different operating system, using the positional information and the data to be deleted in the second area of the portable storage device.