Patent ID: 8028194

Claim:
A system of a backup server, comprising: a processing module configured to examine a received data that is timestamped with a sequence of characters denoting a time according to a clock source through a computer processor associated with the backup server, the timestamp associated with the data received through the computer network from at least one of a client device and other servers, the received data from at least one of the client device and the other servers is stored in the backup storage through the backup server as a part of an information backup service offered by the backup server, wherein the received data is associated with a write I/O received at the backup server from the client device; an analysis module configured to determine through the computer processor that the data having the timestamp received from at least one of a client device and other servers has been time stamped at an earlier time than the timestamp associated with another data previously received through the computer network from at least one of a client device and other servers; a substitution module of the backup server to provide an incremental sequence number that is placed along with the timestamp of the other data denoting a relative time interval when a clock runs in a reverse order using an algorithm until a new data is received that includes a future timestamp with a timestamp later than a timestamp of the other data, wherein the incremental sequence number is generated through the backup server, wherein when a granularity of an increment of a timestamp associated with the data received from client device through the computer network cannot be used to delineate an order of the data associated with the I/O from the client device, then the sequence number is also used to determine the accurate location of the data having the timestamp from the client device stored in the backup storage, the time stamp is associated with the received data that is stored in the backup storage through the backup server; and a storage module to store the data in a data storage medium of the backup server, wherein the storage module to store the data in a continuous data protection repository for a threshold value such that the data is persistently stored, wherein the threshold value is an amount of time, an allocated storage space, an available storage space.