Storing data takes up a lot of energy in data centers – and a lot of the data being stored out there is, shall we say, redundant.

GreenBytes on Monday landed $8 million in a series A investment from Battery Ventures to tackle the problem.

Ashaway, R.I.-based GreenBytes promises its GB-X family of storage devices unveiled earlier this month can de-duplicate stored data on the fly for both primary and backup storage, while using about one-third the electricity of leading storage servers.

The idea is to avoid storing the same data in multiple locations, which wastes storage space and also uses unnecessary electricity to power the extra servers. There's a $20 billion market in network storage out there, which means lots of data to de-duplicate.

Similar efforts are underway to de-duplicate data stored in virtualized networks. Startup FalconStor says its de-duplication software can cut a typical client's storage needs by 20 times or so, with commensurate energy savings of about 18-to-one, said Fadi Albatal, marketing director. (see Virtualization, the Next Wave).

Given that a typical data center might have about 30 percent of its resources dedicated to storage, that's a pretty big reduction, he said.

Data centers are looking to multiple technologies and strategies to cut down on their increasingly large and expensive electricity needs, which could double to a crippling $7.4 billion in power bills, the EPA predicts (see AdaptivCool, the Goldilocks of Data Center Cooling and PG&E Wants to Give Away More Money, See Fewer Email Attachments).