A file division and erasure code application executing in a controlling computational device generates data fragments and parity fragments of a file. Each of the generated data fragments and parity fragments are distributed in a different distributed computational device of a plurality of distributed computational devices, where distributing of a generated data fragment comprises determining whether any distributed computational device already stores a duplicate copy of the generated data fragment, and if any distributed computational device already stores the duplicate copy of the generated data fragment, placing the generated data fragment in the distributed computational device if no other data or parity fragment of the file has already been placed in the distributed computational device.