Moreover, operation 504 includes organizing the selected strips such that a number of each strip in the given erasure code stripe is offset (e.g., skewed) from the remaining strips by an amount that is greater than a total number of strips in the high failure rate regions. In other words, the strips selected in operation 502 are organized such that they can be mapped to form an erasure code stripe that spans across the various optical disks in an offset manner. As noted above, the number of each strip in the given erasure code stripe is may be offset from the remaining strips by an amount that is greater than a total number of strips in the high failure rate regions in some approaches (e.g., see in-use examples of FIGS. 6A-6B below). However, it should be noted that the selected strips may be organized according to any erasure code stripe configuration that would be apparent to one skilled in the art after reading the present description. For instance, in some approaches it is desirable that the high failure rate regions on each storage unit are mapped to one or more sequentially numbered strips. It may also be desirable that the low failure rate regions are mapped to additional sequentially numbered strips (e.g., see in-use examples of FIGS. 6A-6B below).

According to an illustrative approach, which is in no way intended to limit the invention, the process of organizing the selected strips in a desired manner may include dividing the strips into “N” sequentially numbered sets of strips, where N is the number of devices in an erasure code group. By dividing the strips into N sequentially numbered sets of strips, the strips in the given erasure code stripe may each be selected from different sets.