Patent ID: 7584338

Claim:
A method of replicating a deduplicated storage system comprising: requesting a state of a replica system, wherein the replica system is able to reconstruct the same data that is stored on an original deduplicating storage system, wherein the original deduplicating storage system breaks a data file into one or more segments, and wherein the original deduplicating storage system stores a reference to a segment of the one or more segments in the event that an identical segment to the segment was previously stored on the original deduplicating storage system from a first file associated with the segment or from a second file not associated with the segment, and wherein the one or more segments are able to be used to reconstruct the data file; generating on the original deduplicating storage system using a processor a set of instructions for garbage collection to remove a group of segments no longer referred to in a file system of the original deduplicating storage system; and sending the set of instructions for garbage collection to the replica system; and sending a file system log record to the replica system, wherein the file system log record comprises information regarding one or more data files deleted from the original deduplication system that are associated with the group of segments no longer referred to in the file system.