1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions that when executed by a computer cause the computer to perform a method, the method comprising: controlling the computer to synthesize a target entity from a source entity, where the source entity comprises one or more blocks processed by a data de-duplication process and stored in a block repository, where the data de-duplication process is a post-processing data de-duplication process, a storage layout aware data de-duplication process, a storage layout aware cloning process, a storage layout aware replication process, a snapshot/replay process, or a de-duplication defragmentation process, where a representation of the source entity comprises a first named, organized collection of references to blocks produced by the data de-duplication process, where a representation of the target entity is a second named, organized collection of references to blocks produced by the data de-duplication process, and where synthesizing the target entity from the source entity comprises: manipulating the representation of the target entity by copying a reference from the representation of the source entity to the representation of the target entity; establishing the representation of the target entity by adding to the representation of the target entity zero or more references not found in the representation of the source entity; establishing the representation of the target entity by adding to the representation of the target entity at least one reference not found in the representation of the source entity; or logically adding to the target entity a block not referred to by the representation of the source entity; and selectively manipulating a parse context in use by the data de-duplication process to a first default state, a second state associated with a parse context in use at the time the de-duplication process processed a block associated with the source entity, or a third state that emulates a parse context present before a discontinuity in a target stream, where the parse context comprises a current position in an incident data stream, a rolling hash value, a pre-determined condition being evaluated by the de-duplication process, a pattern being sought by the de-duplication process, or progress towards the pattern being sought.