A method, system, and article for compressing an input stream of uncompressed data. The input stream is divided into one or more data segments. A hash is applied to a first data segment, and an offset and length are associated with this first segment. This hash, together with the offset and length data for the first segment, is stored in a hash table. Thereafter, a subsequent segment within the input stream is evaluated and compared with all other hash entries in the hash table, and a reference is written to a prior hash for an identified duplicate segment. The reference includes a new offset location for the subsequent segment. Similarly, a new hash is applied to an identified non-duplicate segment, with the new hash and its corresponding offset stored in the hash table. A compressed output stream of data is created from the hash table retained on storage media.