What is the maximum number of drive failures that can be withstood without losing the data in this configuration?

A storage system is configured with erasure coding, divided up into 12 data segments and 4 coding segments. Each segment is written to different drives.

What is the maximum number of drive failures that can be withstood without losing the data in this configuration?
A . 6
B . 4
C . 3
D . 5

Answer: B

Explanation:

In a typical erasure coded storage system, a set of n disks is divided into m disks to hold data and k disks to hold coding information, where n, m, and k are integers. The coding information is calculated from the data. If up to k of the n disks fail, their contents can be recomputed from the surviving disks.