Patent ID: 8209293

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for storing and retaining data stored on at least one removable storage media device, wherein each removable storage media device stores a data set including a plurality of data elements, the method comprising: creating at least one full backup of data elements in the data set; creating a plurality of incremental backups of the data elements in the data set, wherein the incremental backups comprise data elements that have been modified since the creation of the full backup; storing the created full backup and the created incremental backups to a removable storage media device; and managing retention of the data stored on the removable storage media device, wherein the managing includes, for each incremental backup and full backup stored on the removable storage media device: obtaining an aging preference, wherein the aging preference defines separate periods of retention for the incremental backup and the full backup, retrieving index data indicating a respective date of creation of the incremental backup or the full backup; comparing the retrieved index data with the obtained aging preference; determining that the incremental backup or the full backup exceeds the period of retention based on the comparison; and allocating the removable storage media device to a scratch pool after all of the incremental and full backups exceed the respective period of retention, wherein the scratch pool includes a set of removable storage media devices to be overwritten.