A symmetric triple parity (TP) technique in an array comprising a number p of storage devices, such as disks, with p being a prime number is provided. The p disks are organized as one row parity disk, two symmetric parity disks and p-3 data disks. Phantom diagonal and anti-diagonal parity disks assumed to be present are further assumed to contain a predetermined value, thereby enabling parity encoding/decoding utilizing the phantom (anti-) diagonal disks. Row parity and symmetric parity values are included within the computation of the diagonal and anti-diagonal parities; accordingly, the two symmetric parity and the row parity values may be computed using the same technique as used for a triple parity erasure, i.e., in a symmetric fashion.