US Patent 7266655 Synthesized backup set catalog

Synthesized backup set catalogs are created to more efficiently create synthetic full backups of a data volume or to more efficiently restore a data object of the data volume. In one embodiment, the synthesized backup set catalog comprises n entries corresponding to n data objects, respectively, of a data volume being backed up. The synthesized backup set catalog can be created with the creation of an incremental backup of the data volume. Each entry of the synthesized backup set catalog may contain a backup identification (ID), wherein each backup ID identifies at least one of two backup sets of the data volume.