US 8,751,761 B2 · Snapback-free logical drive duplication

Abstract

There is provided a method of duplicating a logical drive. The method includes sequentially copying data from a source logical drive to a destination logical drive and determining whether a write request is received to a data area on the source logical drive which has not yet been copied to the destination logical drive. If a write request is detected, the data at the write-requested data area is copied to the destination logical drive prior to executing the write request. By providing such a method, the destination logical drive can be used as the change-data store while in the process of the duplication operation, removing the need for a snapshot logical drive in the duplication process. This results in improvements in duplication speed and reduces drive wear due to the reduced number of data reads/writes.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A method of creating an identical copy of a source logical drive on a destination logical drive, the destination logical drive being directly accessible for read/write operations, the method comprising:

starting a duplication operation;
sequentially copying data from the source logical drive to the destination logical drive;
and
determining whether, subsequent to starting said duplication operation, a write request is received to a data area on the source logical drive which has not yet been copied to said destination logical drive by said sequential copy process and, if such a write request is received during said sequential copy process:
copying, independently of said sequential copy process, the data at said write-requested data area to the destination logical drive;
executing said write request;
and
ignoring the data at said write-requested data area during said sequential copying process.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Snapback-free logical drive duplication

Life of this patent

Snapback-free logical drive duplication

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20