Patent ID: 8640136

Claim:
An object management computer system comprising: a storage device; a first computer system comprising a first processor configured to create partitions within a first file; store the partitions on the storage device; and store on the storage device, in a first data object, information about the stored partitions; and a second computer system comprising a second processor configured to: read directly from the first data object as stored on the storage device by the first computer system the information about the stored partitions as stored on the storage device by the first computer system, the read information including a file size attribute associated with the first file, create on the second computer system a second file based on the information in the first data object and corresponding to the first file as described in the first data object, including by using the file size attribute as read from the first data object to create the second file on the second computer system without first transferring to the second computer system any stored partitions comprising the first file, including by setting a size of the second file on the second computer system to be the same as the file size attribute as read from the first data object, free on the second computer system space allocated to the second file to create a stub file on the second computer system, store in a second data object stored on the second computer system information about whether each of said partitions of said first file is present in the second computer system, and retrieve a selected stored partition from the storage device if the selected stored partition is absent from the second computer system and the selected partition is required to respond to a data access request associated with the second file.