US Patent 12079380 Recovering data from encoded data slices interspersed with auxiliary data

A method includes obtaining input encoded data slices from memory of the storage network, where the input encoded data slices include a set of encoded data slices interspersed with a set of auxiliary data slices, where a data segment was error encoded into the set of encoded data slices, and where auxiliary data was error encoded into the set of auxiliary data slices. The method further includes obtaining de-selection information associated with the input encoded data slices and de-selecting the sequence of input encoded data slices based on the de-selection information to produce deselected encoded data slices. The method further includes error decoding at least a decode threshold number of encoded data slices of the deselected encoded data slices in accordance with error decoding parameters to reproduce the data segment. The method further includes outputting the data segment to a requesting computing device of the storage network.