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

January 22, 2026
storage, MinIO, erasure-coding, distributed-systems

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.

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File, Block and Object Storages

August 9, 2022
storage

Files, blocks, and objects are storage formats that hold, organize, and present data in different ways—each with their own capabilities and limitations. File storage organizes and represents data as a hierarchy of files in folders; block storage chunks data into arbitrarily organized, evenly sized volumes; and object storage manages data and links it to associated metadata.

The terms file storage, block storage, and object storage refers to the API that the storage exports to its consumers, regardless of the transport (network, local, etc.).

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