CONTENT ADDRESSABLE STORAGE ARRAY ELEMENT

A content addressable storage array element (CASAE) of a storage system is configured to eliminate duplicate data stored on its storage resources. The CASAE independently determines whether data associated with a write operation has already been written to a location on its storage resources. To that end, the CASAE performs a content addressable storage computation on each data block written to those resources in order to prevent storage of two or more blocks with the same data. If data of a block has been previously stored on the resources, the CASAE cooperates with a file system executing on the system to provide a reference (block pointer) to the same data block rather than duplicate the stored data. Otherwise, the CASAE stores the data block at a new location on the resources and provides a block pointer to that location.