US Patent 9792075 Systems and methods for synthesizing virtual hard drives

A computer-implemented method for synthesizing virtual hard drives may include (1) identifying a data object as an underlying source for synthesizing a virtual hard drive to store data within the data object, (2) generating hard drive metadata for the synthetic virtual hard drive, (3) synthesizing the virtual hard drive as a representation of a virtual hard drive by associating the generated hard drive metadata with the data object as the underlying source such that a data management system is configured to: (a) direct requests for hard drive metadata of the synthetic virtual hard drive to the generated hard drive metadata, and (b) direct requests for hard drive content of the synthetic virtual hard drive to the data object as the underlying source for the synthetic virtual hard drive. Various other methods, systems, and computer-readable media are also disclosed.