Patent ID: 8769185

Claim:
A storage device comprising: a device processor; a computer interface communicably connected to the device processor, wherein the computer interface is configured to communicably couple the device processor to an interface bus of a computer and to enable communications exclusively between a computer processor of the computer and the device processor, a system management interface communicably connected to the device processor, wherein the system management interface is configured to communicably couple the device processor to the interface bus of the computer, the system management interface being connected to the interface bus of the computer separately from the computer interface, and wherein the system management interface is configured to provide the device processor with management functionality over one or more hardware components of the computer, and the device processor is configured to control the one or more hardware components using the management functionality, said control being independent of the operating system running on the computer processor; a network interface communicably connected to the device processor, wherein the network interface is adapted to enable the device processor to communicate over a network, and the device processor is adapted to employ the network interface for communications with select file servers to the exclusion of other file servers; a storage means communicably connected to the device processor, the storage means including a storage area divided into a first designated storage section and a second designated storage section, wherein the device processor has read and write access to both the first and second designated storage sections, the device processor being configured to give the computer: read-only access to the first designated storage section, and read-write access to the second designated storage section; and a removable media storage component communicably connected to the device processor.