The availability of desktop grids and shared computing platforms has popularized the use of contributory resources,
such as desktops, as computing substrates for a variety of applications. However, addressing the exponentially growing
storage demands of applications, especially in a contributory environment, remains a challenging research problem. In
this report, we propose a transparent distributed storage system that harnesses the storage contributed by grid participants
arranged in a peer-to-peer network to yield a scalable, robust, and self-organizing system. The novelty of our work
lies in (i) design simplicity to facilitate actual use; (ii) support for easy integration with grid platforms; (iii) ingenious
use of striping and error coding techniques to support very large data files; and (iv) the use of multicast techniques
for data replication. Experimental results through simulations and an actual implementation show that our system can
provide reliable and efficient storage with large file support for desktop grid applications
