A garbage collection (GC) process within a deduplication backup network comprising a GC component identifying metadata stored in file system (FS) segments, storing the metadata in a metadata container locally on the server as well as on cloud storage, and reading the locally stored metadata container through the GC process to obtain metadata of the FS containers and determine live data regions of the FS containers, wherein the metadata contains fingerprints of all segments of the file system containers; and a copy forward component forwarding the live data regions to new containers written both locally on the server and on the cloud storage, writing live portions of the metadata container to a new metadata container written both locally on the server and on the cloud storage, and deleting dead compression regions from the cloud storage and deleting the original metadata container from local storage and the cloud storage.