It follows that various ones of the approaches included herein are able to store data redundantly across storage units such as optical disks using a mathematical erasure code so that data can be recovered without loss when one or more individual storage units fail. This desirably reduces the number of error recovery code failures that are experienced over time, thereby increasing operational efficiency, reducing latency, decreasing data access times, etc.

Looking now to FIG. 6A, a representational overview 600 of an in-use example for enabling erasure code protection for an optical disk 602 is depicted. It should be noted that the overview 600 according to the present in-use example is in no way intended to limit the invention and may implement any one or more of the approaches that are described herein.

As shown, the optical disk 602 has a thin cross-sectional profile with distinct storage layers extending thereacross. Each of the storage layers include tracks which are labeled according to an illustrative configuration which begins with an innermost track of storage layer 604 (labeled “0”), extending to an outermost track of storage layer 604 which is labeled “N/3?1”. Moreover, an innermost track of storage layer 606 has been labeled “2N/3?1”, while an outermost track of storage layer 606 is labeled “N/3”, and an outermost track of storage layer 608 is labeled “N?1”. However, it should be noted that the thickness of the optical disk 602 and each of the storage layers 604, 606, 608 have been greatly exaggerated for demonstration purposes. Each of the storage layers 604, 606, 608 may also be divided by separator layers which have not been shown.