Patent ID: 7912986

Claim:
A system for secure remote file storage, the system comprising: a client workstation including: an operating system; a user application; a remote drive interface coupled to said user application; and a data transfer layer protocol client coupled to said remote drive interface and for coupling to a server over a network, and a server including: an operating system; a server file system; a data transfer layer protocol server for coupling to a client workstation over a network; and a file handler coupled to said data transfer layer protocol server and to said server file system, wherein said remote drive interface receives block level file commands and unencrypted and uncompressed data blocks of a file from said user application and provides block commands and data blocks to said data transfer layer protocol client, wherein said data transfer layer protocol client compresses and encrypts each block of data received from said remote drive interface for transmission to said server and decrypts and decompresses blocks received from said data transfer layer protocol server and provides the unencrypted and uncompressed data to said remote drive interface, wherein said data transfer layer protocol server receives the encrypted and compressed data blocks from said data transfer layer protocol client and decrypts and decompresses said data blocks for storage in said server file system and provides said data blocks to said file handler for storage in said server file system and compresses and encrypts data blocks retrieved from said server file system by said file handler for transmission to said client workstation, wherein said data blocks are less than the full size of the file; and wherein one of said data transfer layer protocol server and said file handler encrypt data blocks for storage in said server file system after said data blocks are decrypted and decompressed and one of said data transfer layer protocol server and file handler decrypt data blocks received from said server file system to be provided to said data transfer layer protocol server for encryption and compression.