Patent attributes
Resource-efficient data protection is performed by generating meta chunks in storage systems that utilize erasure coding. During erasure coding with a k+m configuration, a data chunk can be divided into k data fragments, having indices 1 to k, that can be encoded by combining them with corresponding coefficients of a coding matrix, to generate coding fragments. Source portions that have a reduced set (e.g., less than k data fragments) of data fragments can be modified such that they are made complementary (e.g., that do not have common indices) without complete data re-protection. The complementary portions can then be combined to generate a meta chunk. The coding fragments of the complementary portions can be added to generate coding fragments for the meta chunk, which can then be utilized to recover data fragments of any of the source portions.
