Patent ID: 7925809

Claim:
A method, comprising: controlling a storage device of a data processing device having a communication interface through which another system is given access to the storage device, said controlling including: vending a first portion of the storage device to the another system while the data processing device is in a disk mode; retaining control, by the data processing device, over a second portion of the storage device while in the disk mode, wherein locking of blocks in the second portion, from access by the another system, is performed at a block level; and expanding a size of the second portion by taking part of the first portion while in the disk mode, said expanding being performed in response to a command from the another system, said command being a command to create a file in said second portion, wherein said file is marked to be unusable by an application on the another system; optionally optimizing data structures of said expanded second portion; the data processing device processing data autonomously when not in disk mode; the data processing device having control over said first portion and said second portion of the storage device when not in the disk mode.