Patent attributes
Reliable and efficient storage and reconstruction of secure data files is provided. Encrypted fragments are generated by exclusive-OR (XOR) based erasure-encoding and XOR encryption of data files. At least some of the encrypted fragments, and preferably at least two copies of such encrypted fragments, are stored at two or more locations, such as but not limited to two or more servers in two or more regional storage systems. Fragments are retrieved from one or more of the multiple locations and the original data file is reconstructed, even if different encryption techniques have been used. If not enough valid fragments from that original data file can be identified then hash values, checksums, seeds, and other techniques may be used to distinguish files and to identify related or identical files which may be used to reconstruct the data file.
