FIGURE 04 is a diagram of a second group of user
control selections 0210 which are required inputs for the system and method 0110.
The illustrated locations dialog in FIGURE 04 invites either input or confirmation
from the user on six elements of data.
The dispersion count 0410 is selected by the user.
The higher the dispersion count 0410, the more widely the fragments 1620 are dispersed
and the more difficult it would be for a malevolent person to access all the parts of
a privacy protected archive 0261 and to decipher their content. Values for the
dispersion count 0410 may range from 2 to 16; a default of 3 is often appropriate.
The dispersion count 0410 is used in two ways. Fragments 1620 are dispersed
across a minimum of two and a maximum of 16 fragment heaps 1651; hence the
expression "dispersion count". These fragment heaps 1651 are padded as
necessary to create composite segments 1652, camouflaged, and written to
composite files 0250, which in turn may be optionally dispersed in unique
sets to "dispersion count" Internet locations. It will be shown later
that the number of unique composite files 0250 produced is always an
exact multiple of the dispersion count 0410.
The user must specify a working directory 0420,
a location on the hard drive or on a local area network to which all copies of output
files 0250, 0260, and 0270 may be written. While the system and method 0110 provides
for optional dispersion of composite files 0250 and the index file 0260 to the
Internet, it is always the case that the outputs 0250, 0260, and 0270 are placed
together in one directory on the user's computer 0920. The rationale of a single
working directory 0420 is that it permits backup prior to optional erasure of the
hard disk copy. In addition, it provides essential working storage for interim
composite files 0250 that may be used as inputs in lieu of original data files
0220 in successive cascades, should the user desire the benefits of multiple
pass cascading fragmentation 0362.
