Patent ID: 8924366

Claim:
A variable length segment storage method comprising: intercepting, by a filter driver interposed between a data source and a third-party fixed length deduplication system, a data stream in transit from the data source to the third-party fixed length deduplication system for storage in the third-party fixed length deduplication system; segmenting, by the filter driver, the data stream into a plurality of variable length segments; performing, by the filter driver, a tailored segment process on each variable length segment of the plurality of variable length segments to create a corresponding tailored segment of a plurality of tailored segments by extending the each variable length segment with at least one bit of alignment padding to align with boundaries of a fixed length deduplication scheme; and sending, by the filter driver, the plurality of tailored segments as a tailored data stream to the third-party fixed length deduplication system, wherein the third-party fixed length deduplication system is configured to perform a fixed length deduplication process associated with the fixed length deduplication scheme on the plurality of tailored segments and store deduplicated tailored segments corresponding to the result of the deduplication process, without any information about the filter driver and each amount of alignment padding of each tailored segment in the plurality of tailored segments.