A system, method, and machine-readable storage medium for analyzing a state of a data object are provided. In some embodiments, the method includes receiving, at a storage device, a metadata request for the data object from a client. The data object is composed of a plurality of segments. The method also includes selecting a subset of the plurality of segments and obtaining a segment state for each segment of the subset. Each segment state indicates whether the respective segment is accessible via a backing store. The method further includes determining a most restrictive state of the one or more segment states and sending state information to the client in response to the metadata request, the state information being derived from the most restrictive state.