Abstract: The present invention is generally related to compression for dividing files into one or more components (or parts), checking for the existence of a part at the receiver prior to transmitting the one or more parts, and deciding not to transmit the part if the receiver already has the part. Additional embodiments of the present invention utilize a similar method to reduce the space required for storage by turning a file for storage into components (or parts), checking for the existence of a part in storage prior to storing the part, and storing a reference to the preexisting part instead of a duplicate of the part if the part already exists in storage.