(19) United States
(12) Patent Application Publication (io) Pub. No.: US 2006/0064444 Al
van Ingen et al. (43) Pub. Date: Mar. 23,2006
(54) METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SYNTHETIC BACKUP AND RESTORE
(75) Inventors: Catharine van Ingen, Bellevue, WA (US); Brian T. Berkowitz, Redmond, WA (US)
Correspondence Address:
LAW OFFICES OF ALBERT S. MICHALIK
C/O MICROSOFT CORPORATION
704 - 228TH AVENUE NE
SUITE 193
SAMMAMISH, WA 98074 (US) (73) Assignee: Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA
(21) Appl. No.: 10/948,009
(22) Filed: Sep. 22, 2004
A method and system for backing up and restoring data. First, a full backup is performed to create a full dataset. Thereafter, incremental or differential datasets may be created by incremental or differential backups, respectively. When a new full dataset is needed, instead of performing a full backup, a previous full dataset may be combined with subsequent incremental or differential datasets to create the new full dataset. The new full dataset may be created on a computer other than the computer which hosts the data of the previous full dataset. The new full dataset may be used for offsite storage or to quickly restore data in the event of a failure or corruption of a computer's file system.
