Erasure coding is a method of storing data at multiple locations after doing its segmentation, expansion, and encoding with redundant information.
Erasure encoding is a simple and fast method to encode data in a lossless format.
Erasure code offers a failure-free storage environment. It is a form of information dispersal algorithm that allows data to be distributed across multiple storage devices. The idea behind erasure coding is simple: rather than writing data to storage in its entirety, it is broken into smaller chunks, which are then used to reconstruct the original data if needed.
Erasure codes can work at different levels of granularity; for example, an entire file can be encoded as K chunks, or a file system block can be encoded as K-independent blocks.
The main advantage of the erasure encoding is that it can be decoded even if some blocks are missing, or not received at all. It is used in different communication systems to improve the robustness against transmission errors.
For some reason, RAID and erasure encoding are mistaken as the same things. In reality, both are quite different.
RAID doesn't actually protect the data on your drives from being read by another computer. Anyone who can get their hands on one of the drives can still see all your information. Erasure encoding does exactly what it sounds like: It scrambles the data so no one can read it without the right key.
Erasure encoding breaks your data into segments and expands and encodes it with redundant information. On the other hand, data isn’t broken apart in RAID.
The key features of erasure coding include:
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