Patent ID: 8458145

Claim:
A storage system, the system comprising: a storage optimization (SO) module operatively coupled to a physical storage space storing a plurality of data units, each data unit of said plurality of data units comprising a data art and a metadata part, wherein said metadata part is added to the data unit by an application that is external to the SO module and wherein the SO module is configured to deduplicate data units that differ only in metadata parts comprised therein, by: differentiate a first data part from a first metadata part, wherein said first data part and said first metadata part are sequentially comprised within a first data unit; and identify a second data unit among said plurality of data units that is partly identical to said first data unit, said second data unit comprises a second data part, which is identical to said first data part, and a second metadata part, which is different from said first metadata part; associate a logical address corresponding to said first data part with a physical address corresponding to said second data part; store said first metadata part in a designated area in said physical storage space and associate a logical address corresponding to said first metadata part with a physical address corresponding to said designated area; and discard said first data part of said first data unit, thereby reducing volume of stored data in said physical storage space.