Patent ID: 8352719

Claim:
A method for booting-up a computing device, the method comprises: detecting, by a processing module, a boot-up of the computing device; addressing, by the processing module, a distributed basic input/output system (BIOS) memory to retrieve a plurality of error coded BIOS data slices; reconstructing, by the processing module, BIOS data from the plurality of error coded BIOS data slices using an error coding dispersal function; and booting up the computing device in accordance with the BIOS data, which includes: generating, by the processing module, BIOS instructions based on the BIOS data; executing, by the processing module, the BIOS instructions, wherein the BIOS instructions includes at least one of: computing device initialization instructions; computing device test instructions; and operating system boot-up instructions, which includes: identifying an operating system (OS); addressing a distributed OS memory to retrieve a first plurality of error coded OS data slices; reconstructing a first OS data segment from the first plurality of error coded OS data slices using a second error coding dispersal function; determining whether to retrieve a second plurality of error coded OS data slices; when the second plurality of error coded OS data slices is to be retrieved, addressing the distributed OS memory to retrieve the second plurality of error coded OS data slices; and reconstructing a second OS data segment from the second plurality of error coded OS data slices using the second error coding dispersal function.