Single-instance storage

Single-instance storage is like sharing your toys with your friends. Say you have a bunch of toy cars, and your friends also have toy cars. Each of you has the same blue car. Instead of keeping three blue toy cars, one for you and one for each of your friends, you can all share just one blue toy car. This is what single-instance storage does with files on a computer.

Say you have a lot of files on your computer, and some of them are the same or very similar. Instead of storing them separately, single-instance storage only stores one copy of the file. When you or someone else needs to access that file, they can all access the same copy. This saves space on your computer's hard drive and makes it faster to access files.

Just like you can share toys with your friends and still play with them, single-instance storage lets you use your files like you normally would, but saves space and time.