De-duplication, or de-duping – also called single-instancing and commonality factoring – can reduce backup volume by factors of as much as 20:1. A number of backup hardware, software, and service vendors will debut de-duping capabilities in 2007. Find out how de-duplication works and how it can streamline backups and save storage dollars.

What Is Data De-duplication?

De-duplication schemes eliminate redundant data on a given storage media. In a de-duping process duplicate data is deleted, leaving only one copy to be stored. However metadata indexing of the data is preserved so the same data may be retrieved for multiple different file requests.

Content Addressable Storage (CAS) uses de-duplication for reducing disk requirements for long-term data archiving. A key emerging trend for 2007...