A storage apparatus composed of a plurality of magnetic disk devices are provided. An encoding unit generates, after dividing original data, a plurality pieces of encoded data equal to or more than the number of division by use of a code of which redundancy is variable. A redundancy control unit varies the redundancy in the encoding unit in accordance with the importance of the original data. A distribution processing unit distributes and stores the plurality of encoded data to and in the plurality of magnetic disk devices. A decoding unit retrieves the encoded data corresponding to, at least, the division number of the original data from the magnetic disk devices so as to decode the original data.