System and method for creating deduplicated copies of data storing non-lossy encodings of data directly in a content addressable store

Systems and methods are disclosed for storing deduplicated images in which a portion of the image is stored in encoded form directly in a hash table, the method comprising: organizing unique content of each data object as a plurality of content segments and storing the content segments in a data store; receiving content to be included in the deduplicated image of the data object; determining if the received content may be encoded using a predefined non-lossy encoding technique and in which the encoded value would fit within the field for containing a hash signature; if so, placing the encoding in the field and marking the hash structure to indicate that the field contains encoded content; otherwise, generating a hash signature for the received content and placing the hash signature in the field and placing the received content in a corresponding content segment if it is unique.