A method of distributing data in a distributed storage system includes receiving a file and dividing the received file into chunks. The chunks are data-chunks and non-data chunks. The method further includes grouping chunks into a group and determining a distribution of the chunks of the group among storage devices of the distributed storage system based on a maintenance hierarchy of the distributed storage system. The maintenance hierarchy includes hierarchical maintenance levels and maintenance domains. Each maintenance domain has an active state or an inactive state; and each storage device is associated with at least one maintenance domain. The method also includes distributing the chunks of the group to the storage devices based on the determined distribution. The chunks of the group are distributed across multiple maintenance domains to maintain an ability to reconstruct chunks of the group when a maintenance domain is in the inactive state.