Patent ID: 8407438

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for managing virtual storage disk data, at least a portion of the method being performed by a computing device comprising at least one processor, the method comprising: identifying first and second virtual storage disks on a physical storage system; identifying relocatable data in the first virtual storage disk that is capable of being physically relocated on the physical storage system; identifying relocatable data in the second virtual storage disk that is capable of being physically relocated on the physical storage system; comparing the relocatable data from the first and second virtual storage disks to identify one or more data objects in the first virtual storage disk that are identical to one or more data objects in the second virtual storage disk; physically relocating one or more of the data objects from the first virtual storage disk to create a first chunk of data without changing a logical state of data in the first virtual storage disk; physically relocating one or more of the data objects from the second virtual storage disk to create a second chunk of data that is identical to the first chunk of data without changing a logical state of data in the second virtual storage disk, wherein physically relocating the identical data objects from the first and second virtual storage disks comprises at least one of: updating file system pointers to refer to new locations of the identical data objects, and/or updating free block lists of the first and second virtual storage disks.