Patent ID: 8087017

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a virtual disk including a first page table block corresponding to one or more other page table blocks or one or more data blocks, the one or more other page table blocks or the one or more data blocks being in a first order; generating a representation of the first page table block, the representation of the first page table block including presence information with respect to the one or more other page table blocks or the one or more data blocks in the virtual disk that are pointed to by the first page table block, the representation being position independent with respect to the one or more data blocks or one or more other page table blocks; signing the representation of the first page table block, where signing the representation includes generating a signature for the first page table block; and changing the offset of the one or more other page table blocks or the one or more data blocks such that the one or more other page table blocks or the one or more data blocks are in a new order.