2015-04-21 – Updated to support Windows 8.1
In a previous guide I covered managing data deduplication (the process that takes two files that are alike or similar and will store only one copy.) This process will save you time and in the end money since the more disk space you have the more you can store! I have been running this process for a number of months and the results are astounding. From the image below you can see how much I have saved on my volumes. Thats ~709GB of data over 5 disks!

This guide will sum up the process to install Data Deduplication on Windows 8. This is a service and product that is not avaible on any Windows 8 version that you can buy, only on the server version. Credit goes out to this guy for these files and guide. But I thought I would sum it up again with some more pictures for the average home user since the instructions were not very user friendly.
Issue – Windows 8 does not include data deduplication roles and features. Only Windows Server 2012
Solution – We use a extracted role-set from Server 2012 and install it on Windows 8.
Grab the files here: Win8Dedupe ( Windows 8.1 Dedupe here)

Once you have the Win8Dedupe.zip downloaded you need to extract it to a local folder, you will see a pile of files that look like this.
Now you will need to open an elevated command promp or CMD. The simplest way to do this in Windows 8 is to click File in the top right of the folder where you extracted the files. Then hover your mouse over Open Command Prompt , Open command prompt as administrator.
With the command line open you will want to type in the following command

(Please note this is one giant command.) I have attached a text document with the commands incase the code below is not copy paste friendly.
Windows 8.0
dism /online /add-package /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-VdsInterop-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.2.9200.16384.cab /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-VdsInterop-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~6.2.9200.16384.cab /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-FileServer-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.2.9200.16384.cab /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-FileServer-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~6.2.9200.16384.cab /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-Dedup-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.2.9200.16384.cab /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-Dedup-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~6.2.9200.16384.cab
dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:Dedup-Core /all
Windows 8.1
dism /online /add-package /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-VdsInterop-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.3.9600.16384.cab /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-VdsInterop-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~6.3.9600.16384.cab /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-FileServer-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.3.9600.16384.cab /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-FileServer-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~6.3.9600.16384.cab /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-Dedup-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.3.9600.16384.cab /packagepath:Microsoft-Windows-Dedup-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~en-US~6.3.9600.16384.cab
dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:Dedup-Core /all
After you enter the code you should see a The operation completed successfully. You need to enter one more command:
dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:Dedup-Core /all

Again you should see an The operation completed successfully.

Now we just need to verify that the role was added to our Win8 host. To do this quickly press Start and typeTurn windows features on or off.

A new window will appear you can see the File Server Role is now installed.
We can now go ahead and configure Windows Deduplication and start saving some space! That is covered in another guide here: http://romcheckfail.com/using-powershell-to-manage-data-deduplication-server-2012-and-windows-8/