and that some may be performed in parallel without departing from the spirit of the invention additionally steps may be subdivided or combined as disclosed herein software written in accordance with the present invention may be stored in some form of computer readable medium such as memory or cd rom or transmitted over a network and executed by a processor though the above has been described with reference to the term u201c backup u201d for illustrative purposes the present invention is equally applicable to all forms of data duplication these forms of data duplication include replication and archiving among others all references cited herein are intended to be incorporated by reference although the present invention has been described above in terms of specific embodiments it is anticipated that alterations and modifications to this invention will no doubt become apparent to those skilled in the art and may be practiced within the scope and equivalents of the appended claims more than one computer may be used such as by using multiple computers in a parallel or load sharing arrangement or distributing tasks across multiple computers such that as a whole they perform the functions of the components identified herein i e they take the place of a single computer various functions described.