Due to the modular nature of the Windows platform, it is actually possible to move features between SKUs, and even between server and client. A user at the My Digital Life forum has experiemented with this and has extracted the necessary packages to run Windows Server 2012’s Data deduplication feature on Windows 8 Pro!
If you want to test that out have a look here: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/34417-Data-deduplication-for-Windows-8-x64
You get no GUI and have to manage Data Dedupe with PowerShell, but that should not be a problem. I was able to save almost 300 GBs on a 500 GB drive storing virual machine images!
If you decide to run this on any production machines take special care when hotfixes and future service packs are released.
More info on the excellent disk deduplication feature here:
Hi, is there these packages for Windows 8.1? After upgrade to Preview I can’t deploy this packages.
Hi Mihail
These packages will have to be extracted from Windows Server 2012 R2 and made available.
Morgan
Can you do this please?