Patent ID: 8132168

Claim:
A method for optimizing a process of determining a location of data identified by a virtual hard drive address, the method comprising: storing, by a virtual hard drive stored on a physical computing device, a master file and a plurality of chained files, a first file in the plurality of chained files comprising a delta of the master file and each subsequent file comprising a delta of a previous file in the plurality of chained files; maintaining a table associating each of a plurality of virtual hard drive addresses with a file in the plurality of chained files containing a current version of data stored at one of the plurality of virtual hard drive addresses; intercepting a request to access data at a virtual hard drive address; identifying, based on the table, a file containing the addressed data; providing, in response to the intercepted request, access to the addressed data from the identified file; determining that a current version of the requested data is not stored in a most recent delta file of the plurality of chained files; and responsive to the determination and based on the table, identifying a file in the plurality of chained files containing the current version of the requested data.