Understanding MinIO Erasure Coding: Erasure Sets, Quorums, Degraded States, and Recovery at Scale

January 22, 2026

This post explains how MinIO implements erasure coding (EC) in practice—covering erasure sets, shard layout, read/write quorums, disk-full behavior, degraded operation, recovery (rebalance + heal), and how MinIO can safely scan very large object namespaces without collapsing under load.

Summarized by ChatGPT from the Q/As in ChatGPT.