Abstract: According to one embodiment, a system in response to a request to back up a virtual machine to a backup storage system, generates a snapshot of the virtual machine. The system identifies one or more files within the snapshot that satisfy a predetermined criterion. If the one or more files are identified, the storage system backs up a modified representation of the snapshot by, analyzing the snapshot to determine addresses of the identified one or more files within the snapshot, and substituting content of the identified one or more files at the addresses with a predetermined data pattern. The system deduplicates the modified representation of the snapshot to remove duplicated data segments and copies data segments of the modified representation of the snapshot to the backup storage system such that data segments to be copied to the backup storage system is minimized.