1. A method performed by a computer system, the method comprising: receiving a data set written to an virtual storage device; partitioning the received data set into a plurality of sections of data; for each section of data, determining whether the section of data includes duplicate data, wherein duplicate data is data that was previously written to another virtual storage device and stored on a physical storage device at a storage location; in response to determining that a section of data includes duplicate data, performing deduplication in relation to the duplicate data; and generating a descriptor for the received data set that identifies the storage location of each section of data previously written to another virtual storage device and stored on the physical storage device, rather than storing the corresponding duplicate data at another storage location on the physical storage device.