Patent ID: 7613752

Claim:
A method for managing the transfer of electronic data in a storage system, the method comprising: receiving input associated with tagging of information shared among a group of users, wherein the input identifies the criteria associated with the tagging of the information; receiving a monitor index having a plurality of entries identifying information about data interactions made by at least one application to a plurality of data objects on first and second storage devices, the entries in the monitor index being populated by a journaling application that monitors the data interactions; automatically determining with one or more computer processors, one or more entries in the monitor index that satisfy the criteria associated with the tagging of the information shared among the group of users; automatically tagging one or more of the entries in the monitor index that satisfy the criteria such that tagged entries and non-tagged entries exist, wherein tagging the entries occurs separately from the monitoring of data interactions by the journaling application, and wherein the tagged entries identify the entries associated with information shared among the group of users; accessing the data objects associated with the tagged entries, to obtain information directly from the data objects associated with the tagged entries; updating, based on the tagged entries, metadata stored in a metabase with information about the data interactions associated with the tagged entries and the information obtained directly from the data objects associated with the tagged entries; evaluating a selected criteria for transferring at least one data object from the first storage device to the second storage device, said evaluating comprising accessing the metadata stored in the metabase; identifying a first data object, of the plurality of data objects, that satisfies the selected criteria; moving the first data object to the second storage device; and updating the metabase to include the location of the first data object on the second storage device when the first data object is associated with a tagged entry in the metabase.