Methods and systems are provided herein that facilitate cost-effective, scalable and reliable archival data organization and management. In an embodiment, data are redundantly encoded and stored to provide data reliability. Further, encoded data may be stored in self-describing storage entities that provide information describing data stored therein. Information provided by self-describing storage entities may be used to construct a limited map that is usable to facilitate data placement and data location services during data storage and retrieval. Data reliability and durability is provided because information about data stored in the system is mostly contained in the storage entities themselves. Cost efficiency is provided because only a limited map is provided for efficiency purposes instead of a potentially large global index data structure.