Patent ID: 8898117

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, at a storage system having a processor and a memory, a read request from a client requesting data; processing the read request to determine that the read request is directed to a compression group of a plurality of compression groups stored on storage devices associated with the storage system; determining if a value is in the compression group, where the value in the compression group indicates that a threshold number of storage entities are freed when compressed data is stored in the compression group, and where the value not in the compression group indicates that the threshold number of storage entities are not freed when the compressed data is stored in the compression group; decompressing the compressed data in the compression group to obtain decompressed data and returning the decompressed data to a client device in response to determining that the value is in the compression group indicating that the compression group contains compressed data such that the threshold number of storage entities are freed when the compressed data is stored in the compression group; and returning uncompressed data from the compression group to the client device in response to determining that the value is not in the compression group indicating that the compression group does not contain the compressed data such that the threshold number of storage entities are not freed when the compressed data is stored in the compression group such that a decompression operation does not need to be performed.