Fault tolerant computer with archival rollback capabilities

A storage device subsystem for providing rollback to a previous desired state, comprising:

• a storage medium comprising a plurality of locations for storing data and having a defined audit partition region comprising one or more of said locations;
• and
• processing circuitry for:
• detecting access requests to alter data on respective sets of one or more of said locations of the storage device;
• responsive to each access request, storing data from said respective set of locations in the audit partition region prior to performing the access request, such that a sequence of data transfers from the storage device is stored in the audit partition region in a known order;
• and
• responsive to a user request, restoring data from said audit partition region to said storage device responsive to a user request to return the storage device to a previous state.

A method of providing rollback of data on a storage device comprising a plurality of locations for storing data to a previous desired state, comprising the steps of:

• defining an audit partition region on the storage device comprising one or more of the locations;
• detecting access requests to alter data on respective sets of one or more of said locations of the storage device;
• responsive to each access request, storing data from said set of locations in the audit partition region prior to performing the access request, such that a sequence of data transfers from the storage device is stored in the audit partition region in a known order;
• and
• responsive to a user request, restoring data from the audit partition region to the respective set of locations on the storage device to return the storage device to a previous state.

A method of providing rollback of data on a storage device comprising a plurality of locations to a previous desired state, comprising the steps of:

• detecting requests to write to the storage device;
• for each request:
• detecting a set of locations to which the request is directed;
• transferring data from said set of locations to an archival memory, such that a sequence of data transfers from the storage device is stored in the archival memory in a known order;
• writing the storage device responsive to the request, such that a copy of the data in said set of locations is stored in the archival memory after said set of locations is overwritten;
• and
• responsive to a user input, restoring data from the archival memory to the respective set of locations on the storage device to return the state of the storage device to a previous state.