This application provides a data processing method and apparatus. In this application, a computing device obtains first data, and determines a deduplication rate of the first data and a working status of the computing device. When the working status of the computing device is a busy state, if the deduplication rate of the first data is greater than or equal to a first preset value, deduplication on the first data is performed. In this way, the data deduplication rate can be ensured, and storage space occupied by the data can be reduced. If the deduplication rate of the first data is lower than the first preset value, deduplication is not performed on the first data, and the first data may be directly stored, to reduce consumption of a computing resource, back up as much data as possible, ensure a backup bandwidth, and increase a backup data amount.