Method and system for compression of files for storage and operation on compressed files

A system for creating a compressed file for storage, comprising:

• a computing device;
• at least one storage device operable in accordance with at least one file access storage protocol;
• and
• a compression system comprising a processor, the compression system coupled to the computing device and the at least one storage device, wherein:
• the compression system, the at least one computing device, and the at least one storage device are separate network entities, and
• the processor is configured to:
• intercept a request addressed by said computing device to said at least one storage device requiring to store a raw file,
• compressing said raw file to generate compressed data,
• storing the compressed data as a compressed file, the compressed file containing a header holding information identifying a substantially exact size of a corresponding raw file,
• intercepting a file access-related request addressed by said computing device to said at least one storage device and referring to a size of said raw file required to be stored, and
• reporting the size of a corresponding raw file in accordance with said information held in a header of the stored compressed file, and
• at least one cluster of the raw file is sequentially processed into corresponding variable size compressed section divided into at least one fixed-size compression logical unit (CLU).

A computer storage medium comprising a computer program product method for generating compressed files for storage in a compression system configured to operatively interface with at least one computing device and at least one storage device operable in a storage network in accordance with at least one file access storage protocol, the computer storage medium comprising:

• code for intercepting, by the compression system, a request addressed by said at least one computer to said at least one storage device requiring to store a raw file;
• code for compressing said raw file to generate compressed data;
• code for storing the compressed data as a compressed file, the compressed file containing a header holding information identifying a substantially exact size of a corresponding raw file;
• code for intercepting, by the compression system, a file access-related request addressed by said at least one computer to said at least one storage device and referring to a size of said raw file required to be stored;
• and
• code for reporting the size of a corresponding raw file in accordance with said information held in the header of the stored compressed file, wherein:
• at least one cluster of the raw file is sequentially processed into corresponding variable size compressed section divided into at least one fixed-size compression logical unit (CLU).