Method of enhancing de-duplication impact by preferential selection of master copy to be retained

摘要

A method and apparatus are provided for enhancing the impact of data de-duplication by preferential selection of the master copy to be retained based on current loads and performance metrics of the storage media devices. The computer system is configured to take as input the identified duplicate copies of data and evaluating their locations in storage devices to determine the cumulative affects of retaining one of the identified duplicate copies as a master copy and optionally allocating a new location if needed. Once a master copy has been designated, the remaining identified duplicate copies are removed from storage.