Patent ID: 8924770

Claim:
A method for rebuilding an encoded data slice for a maintenance free storage container, the method comprises: detecting a storage error of the encoded data slice associated with a storage server of a plurality of storage servers within the maintenance free storage container, wherein the maintenance free storage container allows for multiple storage servers of the plurality of storage servers to be in a failure mode without replacement, wherein data is encoded using a dispersed storage error coding function to produce a set of encoded data slices, which includes the encoded data slice, and wherein at least some encoded data slices of the set of encoded data slices are stored in other storage servers of the plurality of storage servers; determining failure mode information for the storage server and the other storage servers; determining a rebuilding protocol for the encoded data slice based on the failure mode information and whether at least a decode threshold of the other storage servers are available; when the determined rebuilding protocol is a zero information gain (ZIG) protocol: identifying a decode threshold number of storage servers from the other storage servers of the maintenance free storage container and from storage servers of another maintenance free storage container; retrieving zero information gain (ZIG) partial encoded data slices from the decode threshold number of storage servers; and decoding the ZIG partial encoded data slices utilizing a ZIG dispersed storage error coding function to reproduce the encoded data slice.