EXPANDING A HIERARCHICAL DISPERSED STORAGE INDEX

A method begins by a dispersed storage (DS) processing module determining to expand a hierarchical ordered index structure and retrieving a root index node. The method continues with the DS processing module identifying immediate children index nodes, dividing the immediate children index nodes into sets of children index nodes, creating, for each of the sets of children index nodes, a sub-root index node to produce a set of sub-root index nodes, creating a new root index node to include entries for each of the sub-root index nodes of the set of sub-root index nodes, and temporarily storing the new root index node and the set of sub-root index nodes in a dispersed storage network (DSN). When the root index node has not changed, the method continues with the DS processing module updating the hierarchical ordered index structure with the new root index node and the set of sub-root index nodes.