(19) United States
(12) Patent Application Publication (io) Pub. No.: US 2005/0193031 Al
Midgley et al. (43) Pub. Date: Sep. 1,2005
(54) SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR BACKING UP DATA FILES
(75) Inventors: Christopher Midgley, Framingham,
MA (US); John Webb, Sutton, MA
(US); Jim Campbell, Littleton, MA
(US); Manuel Gonsalves, Milford, MA
(US); Dan Chatier, Woonsocket, RI
(US)
Correspondence Address:
FOLEY HOAG, LLP
PATENT GROUP, WORLD TRADE CENTER
WEST
155 SEAPORT BLVD
BOSTON, MA 02110 (US)
(73) Assignee: LiveVault Corporation, Marlborough, MA
(21) Appl. No.: 11/084,270
(22) Filed: Mar. 18, 2005
Related U.S. Application Data
(60) Division ol application No. 10/320,762, filed on Dec. 16, 2002, which is a continuation ol application No.
The invention provides systems and methods lor continuous back up ol data stored on a computer network. To this end the systems ol the invention include a synchronization process that replicates selected source data files data stored on the network and to create a corresponding set ol replicated data files, called the target data files, that are stored on a back up server. This synchronization process builds a baseline data structure ol target data files. In parallel to this synchronization process, the system includes a dynamic replication process that includes a plurality ol agents, each ol which monitors a portion ol the source data files to detect and capture, at the byte-level, changes to the source data files. Each agent may record the changes to a respective journal file, and as the dynamic replication process detects that the journal files contain data, the journal files are translerred or copied to the back up server so that the captured changes can be written to the appropriate ones ol the target data files.
