Systems and Methods for Optimizing a Process of Determining a Location of Data Identified by a Virtual Hard Drive Address

A system for optimizing a process of determining a location of data identified by a virtual hard drive address, the system comprising:

• a plurality of chained files, a first file in the plurality of chained files comprising a delta of a master file and each subsequent file comprising a delta of a previous file in the plurality of chained files;
• a table associating each of a plurality of virtual hard drive addresses with one of the master file and a file in the plurality of chained files containing a current version of data stored at one of the plurality of virtual hard drive addresses;
• a virtual hard drive stored on a physical computing device, the virtual hard drive storing the master file, the plurality of chained files, and the table;
• and
• a hypervisor, in communication with the virtual hard drive, intercepting a request to access data at a virtual hard drive address, identifying, based on the table, a file containing the requested data and responding to the request with access to the requested data.

A computer readable medium having instructions thereon that when executed provide a method for optimizing a process of determining a location of data identified by a virtual hard drive address, the computer readable media comprising:

• instructions to store, by a virtual hard drive stored on a physical computing device, a master file and a plurality of chained files, a first file in the plurality of chained files comprising a delta of the master file and each subsequent file comprising a delta of a previous file in the plurality of chained files;
• instructions to maintain a table associating each of a plurality of virtual hard drive addresses with a file in the plurality of chained files containing a current version of data stored at one of the plurality of virtual hard drive addresses;
• instructions to intercept a request to access data at a virtual hard drive address;
• instructions to identify, based on the table, a file containing the addressed data;
• and
• instructions to provide, in response to the intercepted request, access to the addressed data from the identified file.