A method for storing data across N storage devices S.sub.1 . . . S.sub.N, wherein at least one the storage devices has a storage capacity not equal to a storage capacity of others involves identifying a storage device S.sub.MAX having a largest capacity; encoding the data with an erasure encoder to produce F erasure codewords, where F=.times. ##EQU00001## and distributing the erasure codewords among storage devices S.sub.1 . . . S.sub.N in approximate proportion to the storage capacity C.sub.K of each of S.sub.1 . . . S.sub.N so that enough erasure codewords are stored in each of the N storage devices to assure that if any one of the storage devices become unavailable, all of the data stored in the systems can be restored using the fountain codewords stored in the remaining storage devices. The erasure codewords can be fountain codewords.