A method of duplicating electronically stored data that includes coupling a duplicating device between an original information storage device and a destination storage device, and streaming data from the original information storage device to the duplicating device. An embodiment of the method also includes segmenting the streaming data, determining a length of an uncompressed data segment, and calculating a length of the data segment when compressed. This embodiment further includes determining if the length of the data segment when compressed is less than some threshold, and copying a compressed data segment to the destination storage device if the length of the compressed data segment is less than the threshold, otherwise copying the uncompressed data segment to the destination storage device.