Described is an information dispersal system in which original data to be stored is separated into a number of data "slices" in such a manner that the data in each subset is less usable or less recognizable or completely unusable or completely unrecognizable by itself except when combined with some or all of the other data subsets. These data subsets are stored on separate storage devices as a way of increasing privacy and security. A metadata management system stores and indexes user files across all of the storage nodes. The metadata management system stores metadata for dispersed data where: the dispersed data is in several pieces; and the metadata is in a separate dataspace from the dispersed data.