Patent ID: 8095509

Claim:
A machine-implemented method, comprising: receiving a first instruction to establish a first version of a file; archiving the first version along with a directory path and first access restrictions associated with the first version, wherein the directory path and the first access restrictions are native to the first version, the first version archived to an archive volume; receiving a second instruction to establish a second version of the file; archiving the second version of the file along with the directory path and second access restrictions associated with the second version, wherein the second version archived to the archive volume, and wherein the first version along with the first access restrictions are archived and the second version along with the second access restrictions are archived and then each version is indexed to a particular subdirectory within the archive volume by hashing full paths for each version including server name and directory name and a first portion of each version's file name is retained with an appended time stamp, the full paths hashed to multiple index files, each index file including a particular portion of hash values for the full paths; generating a delta data structure that when applied to the second version permits the first version to be reproduced, the second version is a most recent version of the file whereas the first version is for a prior version of the file occurring before the most recent version of the file, the delta data structure applied to the most recent version to obtain the prior version, wherein the delta data structure records information and instructions in a normalized format that permits the prior version to be obtained from the most recent version; retaining the delta data structure; and deleting the first version from the archive volume having the first version.