Patent ID: 7899789

Claim:
A data shadowing system, connected to a plurality of monitored computer systems, for the automatic backup storage of data into the data shadowing system that is written in the memories of a plurality of monitored computer systems and the selective retrieval of said data from the data shadowing system for restoration to said memories of said monitored computer systems, said data shadowing system comprising: data shadow copy module, connected to a plurality of monitored computer systems via a communication medium, for storing a shadow copy of the data which is written in the memories of the plurality of monitored computer systems; and customer data file manager, resident in each of said plurality of monitored computer systems, for autonomously transmitting customer data files, resident on said monitored computer system, to said data shadow copy module, comprising: customer data file hash generator for processing each of said customer data files to generate an associated hash value of each of said customer data files, customer data file storage manager for storing each of said customer data files and said associated hash value, received from each of said plurality of monitored computer systems via said communication medium, in said data shadow copy module, and customer data file map generator for autonomously mapping file directory structures associated with each of customer data files that are written in the memory of the monitored computer system into file tree information which identifies original names of customer data files and a location of each customer data file as stored on said monitored computer system, and a corresponding location in said data shadow copy module which stores a copy of these customer data files to enable both memory-level and file-level restoration of data to replicate the disk image on the memory of the monitored computer system; wherein said data shadow copy module further comprises: duplication eliminator, responsive to a plurality of said customer data files received from said plurality of monitored computer systems, having the same hash value, for storing a single instance of said customer data file in said data shadow copy module; and wherein said customer data file storage manager additionally stores said file tree information for each of said plurality of customer data files having the same hash value in said data shadow copy module.