REDUCING DATA STORED WHEN USING MULTIPLE INFORMATION DISPERSAL ALGORITHMS

Systems and methods for storing data in a dispersed storage network using at least two information dispersal algorithms (IDA' s) having different widths and thresholds are disclosed. In multiple IDA configurations, at least two IDA's with different widths and thresholds are paired and used to store the data multiple times, where some IDA's provide “wider” IDA configurations that are more reliable and other IDA's provide “narrower” configurations with a lower threshold and lower reliability. Data can be written in the less reliable IDA configurations as a performance optimization to reduce the input/output operations necessary for reading the data. As a further optimization, the processing unit can determine to write only a subset of the IDA configurations. Similarly, dispersed storage units themselves, when reaching the capacity limits for their memory devices, can begin to delete slices they hold for some of the IDA configurations, to free up space.