Patent ID: 7293035

Claim:
A method for applying desired transformations to data such that the number of duplicate chunks in the transformed data is increased and the chunks are predominantly of a fixed size, the method comprising: (a) selecting a group of data from a set of data, the selected group of data comprising a beginning and an end and being continuous between the beginning and the end of the selected group of data and such that a working chunk of data generated from the selected group of data is of size equal to a predetermined size; (b) generating the working chunk of data from the selected group of data by performing at least one of a compression, an encryption and an encoding of the selected group of data; (c) determining whether the working chunk comprises a duplicate chunk of data; (d) when the working chunk does not comprise a duplicate chunk of data, selecting a next group of data from the set of data, the next selected group of data comprising a beginning and an end and being continuous between the beginning and the end of the next selected group of data, the beginning of the next group of data being a predetermined number of data units after the beginning of the current selected group of data, and returning to (b); and (e) when the working chunk comprises a duplicate chunk of data, dividing the data of the data set between the end of the last selected group of data that generated a working chunk that was a duplicate chunk of data and the beginning of the current selected group of data into one or more unique chunks.