Patent ID: 8607122

Claim:
A method comprises: generating a data object identifier for data to be stored in a dispersed storage network (DSN); generating data boundary information based on the data and one or more retrieval preferences, wherein the one or more retrieval preferences facilitates searching for the data, or a partition thereof, once the data is stored in the DSN and wherein the one or more retrieval preferences includes information regarding the data, or the partition thereof; partitioning the data into a plurality of data partitions based on the data boundary information; for a data partition of the plurality of data partitions: segmenting the data partition into a plurality of data segments; dispersed storage error encoding the plurality of data segments to produce a plurality of sets of encoded data slices; generating a plurality of sets of DSN addresses for the plurality of sets of encoded data slices, wherein a DSN address of the plurality of sets of DSN addresses includes: a representation of the data object identifier; a representation of the one or more retrieval preferences; a representation of a corresponding portion of the data boundary information; and dispersed storage addressing information, wherein the data partition is retrievable from storage by: obtaining the data object identifier via a file directory access; and calculating the plurality of sets of DSN addresses based on the data object identifier and the one or more retrieval preferences.