US Patent 7885932 Managing storage of individually accessible data units

Managing data includes: receiving at least one group of individually accessible data units over an input device or port, each data unit identified by a key value, with key values of the received data units being sorted such that the key value identifying a given first data unit that is received before a given second data unit occurs earlier in a sort order than the key value identifying the given second data unit; and processing the data units for storage in a data storage system. The processing includes: storing a plurality of blocks of data, each of one or more of the blocks being generated by combining a plurality of the data units; providing an index that includes an entry for each of the blocks, wherein one or more of the entries enable location, based on a provided key value, of a block that includes data units corresponding to a range of key values that includes the provided key value; and generating one or more screening data structures associated with the stored blocks for determining a possibility that a data unit that includes a given key value was included in the group of individually accessible data units.