Patent ID: 8429345

Claim:
A method for detecting a virtual storage volume, comprising: determining a first access pattern for a read operation of a target storage volume by performing a simulation of the read operation based on a previously defined signature corresponding to the target storage volume, the read operation including signature verification of the target storage volume which includes reading the signature from the target storage volume during at least a part of the read operation; monitoring, after performing the simulation of the read operation, a second access pattern of at least one other storage volume during the read operation while reading the signature from the target storage volume for the signature verification of the target storage volume; determining a correlation between the first access pattern and the second access pattern by comparing the first and second access patterns, wherein the correlation indicates a level of similarity of time-dependent behavior between the first and second access patterns; and deriving that the target storage volume is a virtual storage volume when the determined correlation is above a predefined threshold.