Patent ID: 8627178

Claim:
A method for execution by a processing module of a computing device of a distributed storage network (DSN) device, the method comprises: determining that storage of data requires updating, wherein the data is encoded in accordance with a dispersed storage error encoding function using dispersed storage error encoding parameters to produce a plurality of sets of encoded data slices, which is stored in memory of the DSN, wherein the dispersed storage error encoding parameters includes a total number of encoded data slices per set of encoded data slices and a decode threshold number of encoded data slices that are required from a set of encoded data slices to recover a data segment of the data; for a first type of updating of the storage of the data: increasing the total number while maintaining the decode threshold number; for each of the sets of encoded data slices of the plurality of sets of encode data slices: creating at least one more encoded data slice in accordance with the dispersed storage error encoding function and the increased total number; and sending the at least one more encoded data slice to the memory of the DSN for storage therein; and for a second type of updating of the storage of the data: increasing the total number and increasing the decode threshold number; recovering the data from retrieved encoded data slices of the plurality of sets of encoded data slices; encoding the recovered data in accordance with the dispersed storage error encoding function using the increased total number and the increased decode threshold number to produce an updated plurality of sets of encoded data slices; and sending the updated plurality of sets of encoded data slices to the memory of the DSN for storage therein.