An entries array having a pre-selected number of initially empty buckets and structured as a circular array is maintained. Each of the pre-selected number of entries in the entries array has a corresponding index value. A chaining array having the pre-selected number of buckets and structured as a circular array is also maintained. Each of the pre-selected number of entries in the chaining array has the same corresponding index value as the corresponding bucket in the entries array. A hash operation is performed on data to be stored to determine a hash value corresponding to the data. The data is stored in a bucket in the entries array corresponding to the hash value as an unmovable head-of-chain entry, and moving previous data, if any, stored in the entries array corresponding to the hash value if the previous data has a different hash value. The data is stored in another bucket in the entries array if the bucket in the entries array corresponding to the hash value is occupied by a head-of-chain entry. The bucket storing the data is linked to the head-of-chain entry with the chaining array.