1. A method performed by a computer system, comprising: receiving a data set written to a virtual storage device; partitioning the received data set into multiple sections of data, the partitioning including identifying at least one anchor point surrounded by a data region identified for potential deduplication within the received data set for partitioning into one or more variable sized sections of data, and partitioning remaining portions of the received data set that do not identify an anchor into one or more fixed sized sections of data; for each section of data, determining whether the section of data includes the duplicate data, wherein the 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 the 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.