Patent ID: 8793226

Claim:
A method for estimating duplicate data, comprising: executing a duplicate estimation application on a system having a processor and memory; selecting a data element stored on a storage device of the system; reading a plurality of segments of data from the data element; computing a fingerprint for each of the plurality of segments to produce a plurality of fingerprints; storing the plurality of fingerprints in a fingerprint database; identifying a total number of fingerprints entries in the fingerprint database; identifying a total number of unique fingerprint entries of the total number of fingerprint entries in the fingerprint database, wherein each unique fingerprint represents a single instance of a fingerprint in the total number of fingerprint entries in the fingerprint database; calculating an estimated amount of duplicate data by multiplying a size of a segment of data to a value obtained by subtracting the total number of unique fingerprint entries in the fingerprint database from the total number of fingerprint entries in the fingerprint database; and providing the calculated estimated amount of duplicate data to a display, wherein the calculated estimated amount of duplicate data indicates estimated storage space saving that is realized by employing a data de-duplication technique to eliminate the duplicate data.