Too Long; Didn't Read

Erasure coding is applied to data protection for distributed storage because it is resilient and efficient. It splits data files into data and parity blocks and encodes it so that the primary data is recoverable even if part of the encoded data is not available. Horizontally scalable distributed storage systems rely on erasure coding to provide data protection by saving encoded data across multiple drives and nodes. If a drive or node fails or data becomes corrupted, the original data can be reconstructed from the blocks saved on other drives and nodes.