Patent ID: 7653624

Claim:
A method for tracking changes comprising: reviewing a first file system entry and a second file system entry, where the first and second entries are reviewed in a canonical order, wherein: the canonical ordering also is an ordering in which relative order is preserved; and a file system entry includes any item that may exist in a file system for computer data storage, including a directory or file; providing a record file, wherein a record includes a set of information associated with a particular file system entry and the record is associated with the record file and the record file includes a plurality of records in the canonical order; comparing the first file system entry with the record, wherein comparing includes determining whether the record is after the first file system entry in the canonical order; determining whether the first file system entry is a newly-found file based at least in part on the comparison of the first file system entry with the record; in the event it is determined the first file system entry is a newly-found file: using a sibling offset to bulk copy the record and its children to a scratch file in the canonical order; creating a new record for the first file system entry; writing the new record to a scratch file in the canonical order; merging the record file with a second record file using the scratch file; and backing up the first file system entry; further comprising determining whether the record is not associated with any file system entry in the file system; and in the event it is determined that the record is not associated with any file system entry, the record is omitted from the second record file.