Patent ID: 7949635

Claim:
A method for managing archived data, the method comprising: creating a plurality of images of storage devices of computing systems and for different users, each image representing a state of a particular storage device at a particular point in time and being associated with a restore point of the particular storage device that allows restoring the particular storage device to that point in time; storing the images for the different users in different storage locations, the storage locations being controlled by a single backup server and belonging to storage pools, wherein the backup server stores information regarding a relationship of images to each other, and any relationships of files within the backups, wherein multiple locations of one user are stored in different pools on different storage devices, the different pools having different access speed, wherein a personal folder is created for each user, and all user's images are associated with the user's personal folder, and wherein access rights to data in the personal folders depend on access rights to the personal folder itself; and moving contents of locations of one user from one pool to another in predefined direction, simultaneously with reorganizing images within the locations, and deleting the contents in the one pool after the moving step.