Peripheral device data integrity

Abstract

A system and method for protecting against corruption of data stored in a peripheral storage device. The peripheral storage device is communicatively coupled with a host computer. The peripheral storage device includes at least memory and a controller. Data from the host computer is stored to a first portion of the peripheral storage device memory. The controller backs up some or all of the data to a second portion of the data to a second portion of the peripheral storage device memory. The controller restores some or all of the data from the second portion of the peripheral storage device memory to the first portion of the peripheral storage device memory.

1 - 45 . (canceled) 
     
     
         46 . A method comprising:
 communicatively coupling a peripheral storage device with a host computer, the peripheral storage device comprising memory and a controller;   storing data from the host computer to a first portion of the memory;   backing up some or all of the data to a second portion of the memory;   setting a pointer to indicate that the first portion of the memory is to be used and the second portion of the memory is a backup portion;   restoring some or all of the data from the backup portion of the memory to the first portion of the memory to be used; and   changing the pointer to indicate that the second portion of the memory is to be used and the first portion is to be considered the backup portion.   
     
     
         47 . The method of  claim 46 , wherein the memory comprises an unsecure area and a secure volume. 
     
     
         48 . The method of  claim 47 , further comprising storing a virtual machine image within the secure volume, the virtual machine image comprising a guest operating system. 
     
     
         49 . The method of  claim 46 , wherein restoring some or all of the data is initiated upon detection of data corruption of at least a portion of the data stored in the portion of the memory to be used. 
     
     
         50 . The method of  claim 46 , wherein backing up some or all of the data is performed on a subset of the data that was modified since a previous backup. 
     
     
         51 . The method of  claim 50 , further comprising tracking blocks of the memory modified since the peripheral storage device was communicatively coupled with the host computer, wherein only such modified blocks are copied to the second portion of memory. 
     
     
         52 . The method of  claim 46 , wherein backing up some or all of the data is performed at startup to the peripheral storage device. 
     
     
         53 . The method of  claim 46 , further comprising storing a previous shutdown state of the peripheral storage device. 
     
     
         54 . The method of  claim 53 , wherein the peripheral storage device was cleanly ejected or shutdown previous to backing up some of all of the data. 
     
     
         55 . The method of  claim 46 , further comprising the host computer booting an operating system from the peripheral storage device. 
     
     
         56 . A system comprising:
 a peripheral storage device comprising a memory and a controller, the memory including a first portion of memory and a second portion of memory, the peripheral storage device communicatively coupled with a host computer for storing data from the host computer to the first portion of memory; and   a controller configured to:
 backup some or all of the data to the second portion of memory; 
 set a pointer to indicate that the first portion of memory is to be used and the second portion of memory is a backup portion; 
 restore some or all of the data from the backup portion of memory to the first portion of memory to be used; and 
 change the pointer to indicate that the second portion of memory is to be used and the first portion of memory is to be considered the backup portion. 
   
     
     
         57 . The system of  claim 56 , wherein the memory comprises an unsecure area and a secure volume. 
     
     
         58 . The system of  claim 57 , further comprising a virtual machine image comprising a guest operating system stored within the secure volume.