MinIO divides the drives you provide into erasure-coding sets of *4 to 16* drives. Therefore, the number of drives you present must be a multiple of one of these numbers. Each object is written to a single erasure-coding set.
Minio uses the largest possible EC set size which divides into the number of drives given. For example, *18 drives* are configured as *2 sets of 9 drives*, and *24 drives* are configured as *2 sets of 12 drives*.
Minio uses the largest possible EC set size which divides into the number of drives given. For example, *18 drives* are configured as *2 sets of 9 drives*, and *24 drives* are configured as *2 sets of 12 drives*. This is true for scenarios when running MinIO as a standalone erasure coded deployment. In [distributed setup however node (affinity) based](https://docs.minio.io/docs/distributed-minio-quickstart-guide.html) erasure stripe sizes are chosen.
The drives should all be of approximately the same size.