Patent ID: 8849878

Claim:
A system for efficient data rehydration that minimizes an amount of data transferred, comprising: a server for receiving a restore list indicating a data set comprising a full synthetic backup or a clone of data at a client system, wherein: the restore list is created by checking files when the files are coalesced as the files are added to the restore list, wherein coalescing comprises merging adjacent files to reduce retrieve file calls and an uncoalesced restore list is never created; the data at the client system is backed up at a previous time and stored at one or more backup storage nodes; and the full synthetic backup or the clone is generated after the previous time using only data stored at the one or more backup storage nodes without communicating with or retrieving data from the client system; and one or more reader device managers for reading, using a processor, a data set comprising the full synthetic backup or the clone indicated by the restore list from the one or more backup storage nodes, wherein: the restore list comprises a plurality of storage locations and lengths that indicate data chunks or segments from the client system that have been previously backed up and stored as part of a full or as an incremental backup session on at least a first backup storage node; and the one or more backup storage nodes include at least one full backup session and one or incremental backup sessions.